WY es 
LG XY yi, Yi 
pep oa 4 
Vs iG, 

A, 

Ye 


Big 


/ Uti 
ty 
Le, 

GMI 


Bi ty) j 
WELLL 
ty 
c xs : SPIED, a 

Ae ‘ne ; ; é 4 op Vig gp Mee 
yyy Yep COME Yi, MY 
GL EE ily Loe YUE 


Mie 


ee 


‘pe Wg 
CL 
LY: 
VEE VME? Why 


Z, 
a 


4 
Mo 


“t 


g Lise UY 
Z ee 
SA 


Univ.¢f Ill], Library 


51 
4339 


eo as em Se 


‘ ai ‘5 hs avs 


NOTICE: Return or renew all Library Materials! The Minimum Fee for 
each Lost Book is $50.00. 


The person charging this material is responsible for 
its return to the library from which it was withdrawn 
on or before the Latest Date stamped below. 

Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for discipli- 


nary action and may result in dismissal from the University. 
To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 


L161—O-1096 


| 


‘Big Bird That Displayed as J 
-.. .\Cumning as an Apache Indian, 
A well known hunter and taxidermist 
tells this story of personal experience 
fin South Africa; it goes far beyond dis- — 
pelling a slander that has long clouded 
the fair name of the ostgich: A) 


4 
heyy «tah SRE 


Way fb 
a i at 
ayed as 


Arriving at one of the monster hills 
of the white ant, I climbed upon it and 


Jaised my sébservation glasses to my 


eyes for a careful survey of the region. 
My first glance showed me, arising 
from the dead level of the plain be-. 


yond, two objects, each having the 
‘form of a capital S. These I knew ~ 


were the heads and necks. of two os- 
triches. Though I believed they had 
sighted me, I remained immovable un- 
til their necks were suddenly drawn 


down to the level of the tops of the 
bushes which screened their bodies. | 
Then I knew for a certainty that they > 


were aware of my presence and would 
make a quick retreat. | 

“Without losing an instant’s time I 
ran to the spot where the birds had 


been standing and found their tracks. | 


These I followed as far'‘as they were 


‘distinomichahle and then took a course 


(one F Uoysog oy} Iveu paqyooro Suz 
784 ST 400z Og Aq ZI OMIOS Sulpping y— 


“SUIVI 


-avoy snonuyyuod 914 Aq W4IM patezioqar 


A|snolies uaeq sey aSarloo [BInyNIIsy 


994-48 [[84-SuluuIp Mou 044 uO yO M— 


“HU JO oaoidde 1943080418 40u op SIOULIBT 


84} Jnq s0uByD Jo owes Sunytoxe uy 


S} SIOMOYS oY} UaeMJoq Avy Sulyep— 


| ‘S4up moze doz 4g USI uo s.pavureig 
| “I Byer 48 useq oavy ‘prvurerg [19MIIB xT 
| pus vedooryg jo ually ‘Arnone 

h 


ii 
y 


‘owMUINS 944 pueds [IM soy) o104M 
110d 40x17 toy Avpinyeg ysisyuy qJ2T ~ 


| Ajtwez pure ITB4Sivy “MM sapreyo— 


‘OPBU SUI9q 918 SJUIMaAOIdU pus 
Silvdor apiya yoaa siyy papuodsns st 
doys;xoq sexkg  snZuy 48 yo M— 


{ 


talks about the ease with which rela- 
tions may be established between man 
and birds. Among other things he says: 
_ Birds out-of-doors in the struggle for 
| existence pretty well appreciate that, as | 
| a rule, bad things happen when boys 
and men are around, and they are fear- 
ful and on their guard. In places where 


" 


a hes 2 2 x rT. 


Aq ag 107 


: << Gouw 
sn sasvald JO}BIIpUl 4vay 
UL ‘aay mou eg SUITpury 
MONA OFeNI1y Op oy a1qe 
meq you pey y qorym ‘ep 
94} Ul anoy Lue ye 201300 
_ MOS WO oyeq 0} oq" me 
I *999[dmM00 pus Aseo gr alg 
J [oN U0 oy} pus ‘980 9418 
| sina Ysiainy 0} ada SI 


OSTRICH TACTICS. 


| Big Bird That Displayed as Much 

Cunning as an Apache Indian. 

“A well known hunter and taxidermist 

tells this story of personal experience 

in South Africa; it goes far beyond dis- 
pelling a slander that has long clouded 
the fair name of the ostgich: 

Arriving at one ofthe monster hills 
of the white ant, I climbed-upon it and 
Jaised my Sébseryation glasses to my 

tyes for a careful survey of the region. 

My first glance showed me, arising 

from the dead level of the plain be- 

yond, two objects, each having the 
form of a capital S. These I knew 
were the heads and necks. of two os- 
triches. Though I believed they had 
sighted me, I remained immovable un- 
til their necks were suddenly drawn 
down to the-level of the tops of the 
bushes which screened their bodies. 

Then I knew for a certainty that they 

were aware of my presence and would 

make a quick retreat. 

“Without losing an ‘instant’s time I 
ran to the spot where the birds had 
been standing and found their tracks. 
These I followed as far-as they were 
‘distinguishable and then took a course 
which I believed the birds would nat- 
urally follow. No sooner had I reached 
the top of the ravine than I saw one of 
the ostriches climbing the side hill. Hs- 
timating the distance, I took sight and 
fired. The ball passed immediately be- 

tween his Jegs and struck in the sand 

; ido-hill behind him, 

“Tn an instant the bird darted away 
like an arrow in the direction of a 
small clump of bushes in the center of 
an open space. That he, would pause 
behind this bush and then” finally 
emerge on the other side seemed cer- 
tain, and I aimed to catch him as he 
made a fresh start from behind the 
thorn. He flew over the sand at a ter- - 
rifie rate and reached the bushes, Then 
I waited fully. five minutes for him to 
emerge. from his hiding, with my rifle 
ready. sighted. so.that 1 ceild_pull.the- 

&ger the second he reappeared, but 

finally went forward to Tout him out. 
When I reached the clump of bushes, 
“an examination of the sand showed 
that the crafty old bird had shifted his 
‘Course at a right angle, making the 
turn so suddenly that his feet had 
plowed up the sand for a distance of 
several inches. This wary tact had 
Placed the bushes between the bird 
and myself, and he had made his way 
)to new cover while I was innocently 
waiting for him on the other side of 
the ambush. An Apache Indian could 
‘not have executed this maneuver more 
cleverly, and I smiled at myself for 
having ever been foolish enough to be- 
_Meve the traditional story of how the 
ae, ostrich buries his head in the 

and and believes that he is thereby 
_ concealed.”—Philadelphia Post, 


THE WAYS OF BIRDS. 


In an unusual and interesting article 
on bird life in the Outlook's magazine 
number for July Mr. W. Rk. D. Scott, 
curator of Ornithology at Princeton, 
talks about the ease with which rela- 
tions may be established between man 
and birds. Among other things he says; 

Birds out-of-doors in the struggle for |e 
existence pretty well appreciate that, as 
arule, bad things happen when boys 
aid men-are..areund.and they—nre fear- 
ful and on their guard. In places where 
birds have not been molested by man, 
as in deserts, on the islands of the Pa- 
ciflc, andin parts of Arizona where I 
have been, birds have no fear. Inthe 
latter place I remember going to a bird’s 
nest, and, wishing to see the eggs, I had 
to gently lift the bird off, found out, 
what I wished, and put her back. She 
did not appear to be disturbed or ajarmed 
by this. Nor do I think that there was 
anything peculiar and special in my at- 
titude; this bird had never been dis- 
turbed by man, and felt no fear; there 
was nothing occult about it, nor was it 
because of any peculiar influence which 

I possessed or exercised. I observed a 
few simple rules—that is, I did not 
make a noise or move rapidly, but that 
isall. For instance, in Central Park, 
New York, I have seen a policeman, af- 
ter a few instructions, stand still, hold- 
ing something in his fingers which birds 
Ike, and I have seen a titmouse’ fly and 
take it, simple because people there had 
established such a relation; the man 
had no special power; he was only a 
big, burly policeman, who was not par- 
ticularly in Sympathy with nature. He 
simply put himself into the right attti- 
tude towards bird-life, and it-responded. | 
“It is cosy to establish the right rela- 
tionship with birds. I remember once 
anelm-tree blew down in front of our 
home in which there was anest of 
young flickers. I did not wish to bring 
them into the house, as I did not care to 
have my birds hear their notes, and so 
put them into an old bird-cage and left 
them outside. We fed them with the 
regular bird food, and they grew up all 
right. They became so tame that when 
the door was left open they flew out and 
went all about, but always came back to 
‘the cage, and when the house-door 
Opened and any oneappeared they fairly 
yelled with delight and begged to be fed. 
es 

‘Tis far better to love and be poor, 
than be rich with an empty heart.— 
Lewis Morris. 

—_—_——— 

It is ever true that he who does noth- 
ing for others does nothing for himself. 
— Goethe. 

ee 
_ To ease another's heartache is to for- 
get one’s own.— Abraham Lincoln, 
: ee 
ver lift up a life withont being 
— Hmerson. : 


- You ne 


BIRD-DOM 


BY 
LEANDER 5S. KEYSER 


Tue thrush that carols at the dawn of day 
From the green steeples of the piny wood ; 
The oriole in the elm; the noisy jay, 
Jargoning like a foreigner at his food; 
The bluebird balancing on some topmost spray, 
Flooding with melody the neighborhood ; 
Linnet and meadow-lark, and ali the throng 
That dwell in nests, and have the gift of song. 


— LONGFELLOW. 


BOSTON 
D. LOTHROP COMPANY 


WASHINGTON STREET OPPOSITE BROMFIELD 


CopyRIGHT, 1891, 


¢ BY 


D. Lotrurop Company. 


THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY GENIAL FRIEND 
AMOS R. WELLS 


AS A TOKEN OF ESTEEM AND IN MEMORY OF MANY 
A JAUNT TO THE HOMES OF THE BIRDS. THE 
DELIGHTS OF OUR LITERARY FELLOW- 

SHIP SHALL REMAIN A PLEASANT 


SECRET BETWEEN US 


Wart a 


4 EH: 


ag ob 
j 


AS 


THINK me not unkind and rude 
That I walk in grove and glen; 
I go to the god of the wood 
To fetch his word to men. 


Tax not my sloth that I 
Fold my arms beside the brook; 
Each cloud that floated in the sky 
Writes a letter in my book. 


Chide me not, laborious band, 

For the idle flowers I brought; 
Every aster in my hand 

Goes home laden with a thought. 


There was never mystery 
But ’tis figured in the flowers; 
Was never secret history 
But birds tell it in the bowers. 
— EMERSON. 


NOTE. 


NEARLY all the papers in this collection have 
appeared from time to time in various periodicals of 
the country, and I acknowledge with pleasure the 
uniform courtesy of editors and publishers in permit- 
ting me to reprint. It is but right to say that in 
revising these papers I have added many new obser- 
vations. The following is a lst of the periodicals in 
which one or more of the articles have been printed: 
Outing, Belford’s Magazine, The Congregationalist, 
The Advance, The Interior, Golden Rule, The Iilus- 
trated Christian Weekly, The Churchman, Youth’s 
Companion, Young iia) s Weekly and Morning 
Star. THE AUTHOR. 


CONTENTS. 


THE ALERT EYE ‘ : . ; : 11 
A LESSON IN BIRD STUDY ; : ‘ : Zo 
DIFFICULTIES OF BIRD STUDY : 34 
FIRST MEETINGS . : : : 42 
BIRDS ON THE WING hi : 49 
MY WOODLAND ; : ; : : D7 
A ow QUARTETTE . | : : 69 
LYRISTS OF A SUBURB : ; 80 
A SWEET-VOICED WREN . : : 95 
TANGLES OF BIRD-SONG . ; : j 101 
SONGS OUT OF SEASON . ; : : : 110 
A TINY TILTER : : : 118 
A JOLLY RED-HEAD : : 3 : : 124 
A RED-THROATED RED-HEAD . ; ‘ : 182 
_BRILLIANTS IN PLUMES . : ‘ : ( 138 


DOTS IN FEATHERS. : ; . ; ; 149 


CONTENTS. 


THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE 
BIRDS ABOUT THE HOUSE ; 

THE CUCKOO AND HER NEST . : 

A WOODLAND COASTER . ‘ . : 
A DAINTY WARBLER ; ; : , 
A DECEMBER DAY WITH THE BIRDS : 
THE WOODS IN ERMINE . é ; 
A MIDWINTER WALK ; ; 
TWO FRAGMENTS . : : ; 


GOOD-BY TO THE BIRDS. : ° ° 


BIRD-DOM. 


THE ALERT EYE. 


“ WHAT do you call that bird?” 

I looked up at my companion in surprise. 
Could he really be in earnest in asking the ques- 
tion, or did he only mean to chaff me and test my 
knowledge of bird life? For I had just been tell- 
ing him of my studies in ornithology. But the 
nonplussed expression on his face showed that he 
actually did not know the name of the bird, and 
so I answered, avoiding a patronizing tone: 

“ That, sir, is the red-headed woodpecker.” 

“Oh! is that so?” 

We were walking along one of the suburban 
streets of the town in which I live, when one of 
these familiar woodpeckers flew across the road be- 
fore us, and alighting on the trunk of a tree near 
at hand, began his upward march in characteristic 


fashion. Although I am always interested in the 
. 11 


12 THE ALERT EYE. 


gambols of the birds, at that moment my thoughts 
were engrossed in fixing the mental attitude of my 
friend toward nature. 

What had he been doing with his eyes all the 
while? He was what we are pleased to call an 
educated man; that is, he had a diploma from the 
college whose grounds we were then approaching, 
and had, after completing the classical course, 
spent three more years in taking a special course of 
professional training. During all these years the 
red-headed woodpeckers had been drumming their 
resonant tattoos on the trees of the campus, utter- 
ing their rollicksome cries, playing their odd 
pranks of tilting and poising in the air, and rear- 
ing their crimson-pated families ; and yet my com- 
panion had never observed them — at least, not 
sufficiently to learn even their common name! 
Verily here was a case of a man who, having eyes, 
saw uot, and having ears, heard not. It is not the 
blind eye only that does not see. Many a man 
who prides himself on his acute organs of vision, 
is practically blind as far as many of the interest- 
ing facts of nature are concerned. ‘To me it is 
simply marvelous that any man should be able to 
study so many books, some of them brimming over 
with pastoral poetry and delicate appreciations of 


~ 


THE ALERT EYE. ie 


out-door life, and yet be so indifferent to the en- 
chanting section of the natural world before his 
very eyes. An engaging book on nature at once 
overcomes my physical inertia, and quickly sends 
me with wide-open eyes across the fields. There 
are students who will sit in a darkened room and 
read Milton’s “ L’Allegro” in a kind of mental 
ecstasy; but for my part, such a perusal makes 
every fiber tingle with a desire to fly to the wild- 
wood or the meadow. Truly, we are not all cast 
in the same mould. 

We cannot, I admit, all be specialists in natural 
history or any of its numerous branches, else where 
would be our laborers, our law-makers, our classi- 
cists, our philosophers, our theologians? Candor 
compels me to say that the friend of whom I have 
spoken was a man of no mean abilities. In some 
lines of study he was an acute thinker, and in 
many respects a most excellent and useful citizen. 
I am only expressing surprise that a student of 
such wide culture and such a generous spirit 
should care so little for nature. When she 
throngs us so; when, as Whittier says, — 


‘* Her many hands reach out to us, 
Her many tongues are garrulous,” 


14 THE ALERT EYE. 


ought we not to reserve at least one apartment in 
our hearts for her to dwell in without a rival? 
Does it seem right — I speak now from an ethical 
point of view —to allow other things to crowd 
her wholly out of our affection? Were she but a 
small fragment of the universe, the case would be 
far different; but do not her vastness and ubiquity 
prove that she occupies a large place in the Crea- 
tor’s thought? Outside of the thickly tenanted 
portions of our oreat cities you find more of her, © 
if I may so speak, than of anything else. In quan- 
tity (and I should also say in attractiveness) she 
far excels all the vast accumulations of art. It is 
with something like a thrill of triumph that I 
make the declaration: The country is larger than 
the city. 

And even in the great metropolis art has not 
been able wholly to eliminate nature. Here and 
there are touches of her gentle fingers to remind 
us of the vast domain where she reigns almost 
without a rival, and adorns her possessions at her 
own sweet will. To my mind these quiet, unob- 
trusive boudoirs of nature in the midst of the toil 
and turmoil of metropolitan life, are like the 
shadow of a great rock in a weary. land. 

As before intimated, nature is lavish of her go- 


THE ALERT EYE. 15 


licitations, beckoning us on every hand to become 
her guests and delve into her secrets. Does not 
this fact point unmistakably to the place she ought 
to occupy in our hearts? It is possible that this 
mode of reasoning may prove too much for our pur- 
pose ; but certainly nature’s bountifulness is a fact 
of no small significance. Yet it occurs not intfre- 
quently that those who live nearest to her and 
have easiest access to her great treasuries of knowl- 
edge, know and care very little about her, wander- 
ing through her realm with glazed eyes and un- 
kindled hearts. More than once have I said to 
the toil-worn farmer, after rambling over his prem- 
ises: “ Well, sir, I see the tufted titmice have 
found a pleasant dwelling-place in your woods 
yonder on the hill-side.” 

“ What kind of animals are they?” he would 
ask. | 

“Oh! they are birds, sir—those little lead- 
colored birds that wear a jaunty crest on their 
‘reads and a reddish stripe on their sides.” 

“T never noticed them; didn’t know there were 
such birds on these premises.” 

Of course, out of regard for his feelings, I have 
had to repress the exclamation of surprise that hay 
risen to my lips. One does not like to intimate 


16 | THE ALERT EYE. 


even by a look or an inflection of the voice that 
one’s acquaintances are culpably ignorant, and so 
one often resorts to a little strategy, if not hypo- 
critical pretense, to disguise one’s real feelings. 
But such moralizing is scarcely to the point. Iam 
glad to say that not all our husbandmen are om 
untutored in nature’s lore; for I have gleaned 
many an odd and interesting scrap of information 
on bird-life from inteligent farmers, and have 
found them acute observers, even when they knew 
nothing about systematic ornithology. A little 
time spent in the study of some department of 
natural history by our agricultural friends, would _ 
certainly enrich their lives, relieving them of hum- 
drum and helping to keep them from becoming 
narrow and sordid. Every man, I maintain, should 
have some useful recreative study which he may 
pursue at odd times. It is an old saying, I know, 
but true nevertheless, that “all work and no play 
make Jack a dull boy,” and we might with pro- 
priety add, make his father a duller man. It isa 
law of ethics that the play-spirit is inherent in 
every one of us, whether we be young or old, and 
no man ought to ignore it; it is one of God’s 
voices in human nature. 

In the last analysis it is the alert mind that 


THE ALERT EYE. 17 


makes the alert eye. All of us see those things 
that we are interested in. Why did not the man 
who has just emerged from the woods, see a single 
bird or hear a single note of bird minstrelsy ? Be- 
cause his mind was otherwise occupied. And so 
the nuthatch called Henk-a, henk-a, the titmouse 
chirped its Chick-a-da-da, and the brown creeper 
lisped its piercing 7's-e-e-e, ts-e-e-e, but the man’s 
dull ear caught no welcoming salute, and his lack- 
luster eye saw no transit of pinions across his path. 
There are many persons whose minds need to be 
awakened to an appreciation of nature, and that is 
one of the purposes of this unpretending volume. 
If the hearts of the young could be stirred to a 
love of nature, and their minds aroused to study 
her, much would be done toward solving some of 
the perplexing social problems of the day. 

Closely akin to the unseeing eye is the unbeliev- 
ing mind; at all events, the kinship is sufficiently 
close to justify a brief notice in a paper that does 
not pretend to be a philosophic discussion. Here 
and there you will find persons who are always 
skeptical of the statements of the naturalist, espe- 
cially if he describes some occurrence unheard-of 
before, or not found in “the books;” and usually 
the ground for their demur is that they themselves 


18 THE ALERT EYE. 


have not been eye-witnesses of the facts. Having 
gone stupidly through life with unrewarded vision, 
they cannot believe that others have seen so many 
interesting things that they themselves have failed 
to see. And let me ask, en passant, Is not that 
the secret of a great deal of the skepticism of the 
times ? 

In his delightful book, “ Outings at Odd Times,” 
Charles C. Abbott tells us that an ornithologist 
once wrote to him, “Some of your birds in New 
Jersey have strange ways.” Mr. Abbott rightly 
resents the innuendo so evident in the sentence, 
and replies with some vigor that “ birds in New 
Jersey,” as elsewhere, are “ wide-awake, cunning, 
quick to scent danger, and wise enough to suit 
themselves to their surroundings.” I do not call 
in question a single statement made by this alert 
and careful observer of bird deportment, because 
—I say it modestly, I hope —I have myself seen 
many quaint and unheard-of pranks in my study 
of the “ feathered republic.” 

I have also encountered the skeptic, as has every 
chronicler of nature’s doings. For example: I was 
once telling an acquaintance, with no small degree 
of animation, about the cunning artifices of several 


crested chickadees, as described to me by a relative 


THE ALERT EYE. 19 


whose veracity I have no reason to doubt, when, 
as I concluded, my interlocutor turned upon me 
with the startling inquiry: “Do you believe that 
story?” How I controlled my rising impulse of 
anger I do not know. Why should my friends 
invent an ornithological fiction, and then palm it 
off on me for the truth? The real gist of the in- 
quiry was that the doubter himself had never wit- 
nessed the wise tricks of the titmouse — indeed, 
he would not have known a titmouse if he had 
seen one — and so it was a foregone conclusion that 
no one else had. 

On more than one occasion have persons said to 
me, with a very skeptical intonation in their voice, 
“Did you really see all the birds you mentioned in 
your article — all in one day ?”’ or, “ Did you really 
hear that medley of bird song?” And they man- — 
age to throw a volume of doubt into the word 
really. As well might they ask, “ Are you really 
telling the truth?” Such expressions of doubt 
are, to say the least, not very complimentary. But, 
after all, the real question is, How shall we observ- 
ers of nature convey information to others if our 
testimony is not to be accepted by non-observers ? 
It is, therefore, in the interest of natural history 
that we solicit the confidence of our readers. 


20 THE ALERT EYE. 


As far as the statements contained in this little 
contribution to bird lore are concerned, I am 
tempted to borrow a quotation from Sir Walter 
Scott, who said, somewhat forcefully, though I 
admit not very poetically : 


‘* Better had they ne’er been born, 
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.” 


Of course, I do not mean to say that the couplet 
has reference to the observations recorded in this 
humble book. Still, I do go so far as to say that, 
if I must err, I prefer to err on the side of faith 
rather than on the side of unbelief. I am aware 
that Shakespeare declares that ‘“ modest doubt is 
called the beacon of the wise,” but I am convinced 
that he thought it was miscalled so. 

The foregoing has not been said to forefend criti- 
cism, for that would be childish, especially when 
criticism might prove an excellent mental and 
moral discipline to the author; but it is said to 
ward off skepticism, which can profit neither the 
reader nor the author, and might lead to an es- 
trangement that the latter would regret exceed- 
ingly. To be serious, the author has tried to 
describe truthfully every observation he has made, 


THE ALERT EYE. yAl 


and has sought rather to understate than overstate 
where there was room for doubt. If at any time 
he has ventured to advance a theory, he has 
guarded against thrusting it forward as an estab- 
lished fact. 

One word more. On a bright day of early 
spring I was walking along a country road with a 
number of friends, among them a somewhat crusty 
and gruff-spoken old farmer. There were bobolink 
concerts in the clover fields to right and left. 
These delightful vocalists would dart up from the 
grass, burst into an ecstasy of song that made the 
air quiver, circle about in graceful flight, and then 
airily descend, sending back a parting shaft of 
melody after they had sunk into the sea of fragrant 
clover. How could a bird lover repress his excite- 
ment! I called attention to the bird songs, asking 
the company to pause a moment and listen. 

“Have you ever heard richer melody ?” I in- 
quired. 

“Well, what’s the use of it, anyhow?” broke 
out the farmer, who, it seems, was a_ thorough- 
going utilitarian. 

This was too much. I turned upon him and 
delivered him a homily on the spot. If he soon 
forgets it, it will be no fault of mine. Why has 


bo 
bo 


THE ALERT EYE. 


the Creator given the bobolink such a tuneful 
throat, if it was for no significant purpose? Not 
only as an outlet for the bird’s exuberant feelings, 
but also for man’s esthetic delight, was this feath- 
ered songster so richly gifted with vocal sweetness. 
Besides, a proper reverence for the Creator ought 
to prevent us from casting contempt upon any part 
of his handiwork. With what infinite skill has 
he made the feather of a bird! That which has 
engaged his attention should not be thought un- 
worthy of ours. And this is said in this place, not 
in the interest of religion, but in the interest of 
science. 


A LESSON IN BIRD STUDY. 


THIs paper has been prepared for junior stu- 
dents of ornithology and not for seniors, and for 
that reason it has been written in a plain, direct 
style. I wish to say to the boys and girls and 
young people who may read this book, that, even 
after I became a man, I should have been grateful 
to the writer who had given me such a lesson in 
bird study as I purpose giving you. “ How shall 
we begin?” and, * What are the tools necessary for 
carrying on our researches?” ‘These are questions 
which every tyro will ask, and [ shall surely do 
him a service by answering them. 

Before I begin, however, I shall take occasion to 
throw out a word or two of caution. Do not use 
a gun; then there will be no danger of shooting 
either yourself or the birds. Perhaps it is right to 
kill the English sparrows, for I believe they do more 
harm than good; but it is wanton to shoot our use- 
ful and beautiful native birds which fill the air 


with song. Every one of them, no matter how 
23 


24 A LESSON IN BIRD STUDY. 


small, destroys thousands of noxious insects that 
would soon play havoc with our vegetation if al- 
lowed to live. Do not think, either, that because 
you are a bird-student you must have a mounted 
collection of birds, or that you must catch them 
for cages. They are far more interesting in the 
- bush and on the wing than in confinement, and 
sing much more gayly. What active boy or girl 
would like to be cooped up in a room on a bright 
day of spring? Well, the birds enjoy out-door 
life as much as the boys and girls do. It is a 
good thing to remember and heed the Golden 
Rule in our treatment of the living creatures 
around us. 

In the study of birds you cannot succeed very 
well without an opera-glass. A good one is a 
little expensive, it is true, but it would be better 
to spend money in that way than for trifles. Such 
a glass will enable you to see the markings of a 
bird at a distance, whereas if you use only the 
naked eye you cannot get near enough to identify 
many shy birds. Some of the rarest and most 
beautiful species have the provoking habit of haunt- 
ing the tops of tall trees, or remaining just far 
enough away from the observer to make their 
identification impossible without a glass. Besides, 


A LESSON IN BIRD STUDY. 25 


you will often see a bird at a distance which looks 
like a new specimen, but by fixing your glass upon 
it you will perhaps find that it is an old acquaint- 
ance, and thus you will be saved many a useless 
step. 

Of course, your outfit would not be complete 
without a good bird-manual — that is, a book 
which gives brief but accurate descriptions of all 
the birds in your neighborhood. The first treatise 
of the kind I ever tried to use was Stearns’ “ New 
England Bird Life”; in many respects an excellent 
work; but as I had never lived in New England, 
I did not find it wholly satisfactory. In some way, 
I cannot now remember how, I learned of Dr. 
J. M. Wheaton’s “ Report on the Birds of Ohio,” 
which I bought in paper covers for one dollar and 
then had bound in leather for the same amount, 
and now I seldom take a stroll to pursue my favor- 
ite study, without putting this volume into my 
book-bag, which is flung over my shoulder. When- 
ever I espy a bird that I do not know, I get all his 
markings by ogling him with my glass, and then 
look up the description of him in my manual. At 
first you will become sadly confused in trying ‘to 
use a key, because there are so many birds de- 


scribed which you have never seen nor even heard 


26 A LESSON.IN BIRD STUDY. 


of ; but by and by, if you are patient, you will be 
able to “ bring order out of chaos,” and will find 
it quite easy to identify, new species. 

It would be well to write to some one who is 
likely to know about such things, inquiring if 
there is a work published on the birds of your 
State.. If there is none, I would recommend 
Coues’ “Key to North American Birds” [latest 
edition]. The only objection to it is that it is 
almost too large and heavy to carry with you in 
your rambles; but it is the best work with which 
Iam acquainted for the beginner. It gives plain 
and accurate descriptions of all the birds of North 
America, and contains cuts of many of them, which 
will often enable you to recognize a new specimen 
at sight. 

In the papers that follow you will find that I 
have made frequent reference to Robert Ridgway’s 
“ Manual of North American Birds;” a work that 
I use constantly and that is thoroughly reliable. 
However, for the beginner it is not so good. The 
plates are practically useless for purposes of identi- 
fication, although quite valuable for those inter- 
ested in the anatomy of birds. Then, the method 
of classification, or rather the arrangement of the 


various orders, families, genera, and species, 1s so 


A LESSON IN BIRD STUDY. pied 


complicated that it will not be readily understood 
by young persons. 

- For the encouragement of the beginner I will 
describe my first attempt to use a manual out of 
doors. I had gone to a pleasant grove that skirted 
a broad, rippling river in the northern part of one 
of our Middle States. My experience doubtless 
tallies with that of every novice. It was a bright 
day in spring, and there were perhaps a dozen 
species of birds which I did not know, flitting 
about me and making the grove vocal with song. 
You will not wonder that I was almost thrown into 
despair when I confess frankly that I could not at 
that time have told the song-sparrow and the grass- 
finch apart, although they are among our most 
familiar birds. Opening my hand-book at the 
proper place, I tried to identify a small bird, which 
I thought must be a sparrow, hopping about on the 
grass before me; but what was my surprise to find 
descriptions of over a dozen species of the sparrow 
family, while I scarcely knew one of them! I read 
one description after another, but most of them 
seemed so much alike and there were so many con- 
fusing details, that for the life of me I could not 
identify a single specimen before me. I need not 
say that I went home very blue and disheartened. 


28 A LESSON IN BIRD STUDY. 


That experience has been duplicated many times 
since that first excursion, and even now there are 
times when I become sadly confused, especially 
when there are a dozen species of warblers in their 
autumnal plumage glancing about in the bushes 
and tree-tops. 

Before you start out on your first excursion to 
study the birdsin a systematic way, look over your 
key to see how our citizens in feathers have been 
classified by ornithologists. There is usually a table 
somewhere in the book giving an outline of the 
higher groups. Observe that the bird-world has 
been divided into various orders, such as the divers, — 
the swimmers, the shore birds, the birds of prey, 
the perchers, and so on. Then these orders have 
been subdivided into families, and the families into 
species. You need not commit the long Latin 
names, unless you prefer, but familiarize yourself 
with the common names, and study the special 
features of each group, so that you will not be all 
at sea when you meet new birds. 

If you live near the sea coast or lake shore, you 
will want to get some idea of the shore birds from 
your key. But if you desire to study the birds of 
the fields and woods, you should give special atten- 
tion to the perchers, woodpeckers, birds of prey, ete. 


A LESSON IN BIRD STUDY. 29 


Do not become discouraged if you fail at first and 
cannot identify the birds you see; the rare pleas- 
ure of finding new specimens and identifying them, 
as you gain facility in the use of your manual, will 
be ample reward for all your toil. 

Familiarize yourself as rapidly as possible with | 
the distinguishing features of each division and 
subdivision, so that when you encounter a specie 
you have never seen before, you will know in what 
part of your manual to look for the description. 
If you should see a wood thrush for the first time, 
you should know enough about the various classes 
of birds not to look for it among the flycatchers or 
warblers. A littleattention to this matter will save 
you a great deal of time and annoyance. 

Permit me to say here, lest I be misunderstood, 
that I do not think a manual ought to be pored 
over and committed to memory in a routine way, 
before any field work is done. After a general 
idea of the classification of the birds has been. 
acquired, go out and study them in their native 
haunts. In acquiring a language the student 
fixes the tables of declension and conjugation more 
firmly in mind by constant drill in translation; so 
in acquiring bird-lore. When I went tothe district 
school, we used a series of readers which taught us 


30 A LESSON IN BIRD STUDY. 


a great deal about natural history, including the 
birds ; but we studied them merely in a mechanical 
way, and never once thought of walking out to the 
fields and woods to make a practical use of the 
book-knowledge we had gained. ‘The consequence 
was that in a short while we had forgotten almost 
everything we had learned. 

While I urge upon the student to be much out 
of doors, I still feel that it is well for him to 
become as familiar as possible with his manual, 
studying the descriptions of all the species within 
the radius of his observations,even though he may 
not as yet have seen many of them. When he 
does meet them his previous study will be useful 
and save trouble. Some months ago I saw my first 
red-breasted nuthatch — a bird that is only a mi- 
grant and a rare one in my locality. The moment 
my eye fell upon it I recognized it, because I had 
so often read the description of this species in my 
hand-book that its size, color, habits, etc., were 
firmly fixed in my mind. In the same way I at 
once identified the fox-sparrow, the tree-sparrow, 
the tufted titmouse, the purple finch, the yellow- 
rumped warbler, and many others. ° 

How grateful I should have been a number of 


years ago for a sample lesson on bird identification! 


A LESSON IN BIRD STUDY. oa 


Perhaps some of my readers would appreciate such 
an exercise. 

Suppose you are desirous of studying the spar- 
rows of your locality, but on consulting your key 
you become perplexed by the details, and scarcely 
know where or how to begin. Instead of trying to 
learn all the minutiz at once, it is better to seize 
upon several of the more striking peculiarities of 
each species, as designated in your hand-book, and 
hold them firmly in mind. 

The sparrows are, as a rule, plain-colored birds, 
the colors being arranged in stripes on the upper 
parts and often on the lower. The English spar- 
row is an obnoxious fellow, I know, differing in 
that respect from our native sparrows; but he 
affords an example of the general appearance of 
all the members of this interesting croup. Now 
observe what your key says about the various 
species of the sparrow household. ‘There are the 
song-sparrow and the grass-finch —they are of 
nearly the same size, and both have striped breasts ; 
but the song-sparrow has a dark blotch on the cen- 
ter of his chest, and a dark brown stripe on each 
side of his throat, while the grass-finch has two 
white lateral tail-feathers, which -can be plainly 
seen when the bird takes to wing. 


on A LESSON IN BIRD STUDY. 


Smaller than these birds are the chipping and 
wood-sparrows, which are often confounded by the 
beginner. Their lower parts are grayish white and _ 
unstriped. They look much alike, but the wood- - 
sparrow is of a more reddish cast than the chippy, 
and the white stripes on the head are not so sharply 
defined. Besides, chippy’s bill is black, while his 
little sylvan cousin’s is flesh-colored. The grass- 
hopper sparrow is still smaller and darker. The 
tree-sparrow, which is not quite as large as the 
erass-finch, has an obscure dusky spot in the center 
of his chest, by which you may always distinguish 
him from other members of the family. You will 
at once recognize the white-throated and white- 
crowned sparrows; their markings are somewhat 
alike on the top of the head, but the white-crown 
has no white throat, and his general color is a fine 
dark ash, while the white-throat is more brownish. 
Larger than any of these is the fox-sparrow, a 
splendid bird, with a network of reddish brown 
stripes on his entire lower parts. 

Remember that there are many minor points of 
difference among these species, but I have pur- 
posely described only the broader and more con- 
spicuous distinguishing traits. In like manner you 


may study each group of the entire bird system. 


A LESSON IN BIRD STUDY. 33 


But when shall we begin the study? Begin 
now. “Now is the accepted time” in bird study 
as well as in matters of religion. It may be in the 
midst of winter, but if you will go to the woods, 
you will find a few hardy birds which have not 
been driven South by the rigors of the climate, and 
you can take the first step in your researches by 
studying them. If there are not so many species, 
you will not be so likely to become confused. I 
remember when I thought it scarcely worth while 
to go to the woods to study natural history in the 
winter time, especially on stormy days; but I have 
greatly modified my opinions on that point. Some 
of the most delightful hours I have ever spent 
in the haunts of the birds have been when the 
wind howled dismally through the bare forest trees 
and the snow lay a foot deep upon the ground. 

In identifying the birds you will find a clear day 
most favorable. If you keep the sun to your back, 
the blue sky forms an excellent background for 
bringing out plainly the markings of the plumage, 
while a clouded sky is rather too light, and there- 
fore blurs the colors of the birds and blinds the 
eyes of the observer. However, if I wanted to 
study the inhabitants of the air, I should not stop 
for inclement weather. 


DIFFICULTIES OF BIRD STUDY. 


No vocation can be pursued without annoyances 
of some kind. Even our recreations cannot be 
taken wholly on tlowery beds of ease, and I doubt 
if we should appreciate them if they cost us no 
effort. I would not paint the study of ornithology 
all roseate ; for that would not be quite honest; 
and perhaps some reader, spurred for the moment 
to begin a quest for bird-lore, might find himself 
disheartened on encountering the obstacles, and 
might declare that bird study is not what it has 
been represented by enthusiasts. It is true, the 
barriers that nature has raised about every depart- 
ment of scientific inquiry are not insuperable, 
when the student is determined to overcome them ; 
but they do exist, and must be recognized. 

First, then, the study of birds requires time and 
effort. A dull, lazy person will not make a good 
ornithologist. To use a trite comparison, the 
mountain will not come to Mohammed, but Mo- 


hammed must go to the mountain. So the student 
34 


DIFFICULTIES OF BIRD STUDY. 30 


must go to the homes and haunts of the birds, if 
he would know about them, and this will render 
many long and wearisome tramps necessary. He 
must not become discouraged because his limbs 
erow weary, and his stomach often cries for 
reinforcement. 

Nor can he select only the pleasant, sunny 
slopes, the dry upland fields, or the shady groves 
for rambling grounds, but must thread his way 
through bush and brake, across lowland and marsh, 
and never mind wetting his feet or soiling his 
clothes. 

By the way, do not don a broadcloth suit 
when you take an outing, for, if you do, you 
will either miss the birds or go to church the next 
Sunday in a tatterdemalion’s toilet. You-will see 
the force of this counsel when you remember that 
often the most delightful members of the bird 
community choose the tangled copse or the boggy 
marsh for a dwelling place. 

Often, too, while his neighbors are wrapped in 
their morning slumbers, the naturalist must break 
the fetters of refreshing sleep, bestir himself with 
a strong will, and hurry out of town before the 
eray dawn breaks, if he wants to feel the thrill and 
transport of the matin concerts. Never are the 


36 DIFFICULTIES OF BIRD STUDY. 


lyres of the birds so finely strung, or the strings so 
delicately touched, as during the space between 
daybreak and sunrise. Our feathered minstrels 
get out of their leafy beds early, so as to salute 
the sun with song. Not to speak in a patronizing 
tone, I have often pitied those dull people who 
were snoozing away the glorious morning hours, 
while I was enjoying the out-door voluntaries, all 
free of charge. It is our own Lowell who says so 


sweetly : 


‘* No price is set on the lavish Summer; 
June may be had by the poorest comer.” 


And that is true, save that one must pay the 
cost of a little effort if one would make the fair 
earth’s possessions one’s own. 

If we want Nature to confide her secrets tous, 
we must go in quest of them to her out-of-the-way 
haunts ; we must treat her as if we were in earnest, 
and not in a cold, perfunctory spirit, and then she 
will lay her heart open to us. Her language to 
every student at every step is, “I will yet for this 
be inquired of.” | 

The talisman of Emerson’s “ forest seer” that 


won for him so many of nature’s secrets, was alert- 


DIFFICULTIES OF BIRD STUDY. 37 


ness, industry, persistence; and hence the poet 
could say of him: 


‘¢ What others did at distance hear, 
And guessed within the thicket’s gloom, 
Was shown to this philosopher, 
And at his bidding seemed to come.” 


First attempts at using a “manual” or “key ” 
are always attended with difficulty, for there seems 
to be no end to the families, genera, species, and 
even sub-species; and frequently the descriptions 
are so nearly alike that one becomes sadly con- 
fused, even with the bird in plain sight before 
one. ‘There, for example, are the hermit thrush, 
the wood thrush, the olive-backed thrush, the gray- 
cheeked thrush, and the veery thrush. What a 
time I have had trying to fix their places in the 
bird category! After reading one description, I 
would exclaim, *“ That’s the bird, no doubt about 
it!” But to make certainty doubly sure, I would 
read the next description, and then find that I was 
less confident, until, by the time I had read four 
or five descriptions, my mind would be in a perfect 
jumble. And then there are the warblers, a numer- 
ous fraternity of small, insect-eating birds, many 
of them only migrants in the Middle States. How 


38 DIFFICULTIES OF BIRD STUDY. 


is one ever to discriminate among such an army? 
In my own State there are to be found at least 
thirty-seven species of the Sylvicolide, either as 
residents or migrants, many of them looking so 
much alike that confusion is inevitable. Add to 
this the fact that their autumn garb is often differ- 
ent from their spring costume, and also that many 
of them are extremely shy, concealing themselves 
in thickets, or remaining in the tops of the tallest 
trees, and you will see that bird lore is acquired 
at the cost of a good deal of patience, persistence, 
and —I had almost said — sweetness of temper. 
Many birds display an expertness in finding hid- 
ing-places that amounts to a fine art. You per- 
haps catch a glimpse of a little bird in the bushes, 
and there is a flash of color that sets your pulses 
fluttering; but before you can fix him with your 
glass, he has flitted behind a thick clump of tangle- 
wood, and though you plunge in after him, getting 
your feet wet and your hands and face scratched 
by the briers, he still eludes you, affording ‘only 
momentary glimpses of himself, until, at last, if 
the pursuit becomes too hot, he chips sharply, flirts 
his tail, and then flies across the river, flinging back 
at you a saucy gird of bird talk. It does no good 
to scold or coax, to stamp your foot, or use your 


DIFFICULTIES OF BIRD STUDY. 39 


arts of persuasion; the bird is incorrigible ; he is 
too much for you. 

As I was taking an autumn tramp along the 
Mad River, in Ohio, I heard a remarkable chatter- 
ing and scolding in a thick tangle of weeds and 
vines at the foot of the cliffs. I was sure of a 
“find’’; but in spite of all my beating about, 
stealthy approaches, coaxing and hoaxing, I could 
not get my eye on that bird; for no sooner had I 
struggled to the place where I last heard him, than 
his petulant chatter came up from another hiding- 
place. Patience became exhausted at last, and I 
went home in a dejected frame of mind. What 
could the feathered tantalizer have been? I have 
read many descriptions of that tricksy spirit, the 
yellow-breasted chat, and have been looking for 
him ever since I began my out-door studies; but 
he still remains a stranger to me. What would [ 
not have given to know that the bird I had been 
pursuing was the far-famed chat ! * 

Some writers advise shooting the birds for pur- 
poses of identification; but suppose all of us who 
love them — and I hope the number of their ad- 


* Subsequent investigations force me to make the humiliating confession 
that the bird of which I here speak was a familiar species and not the chat. 
I am glad to say that, since the foregoing was written, I have not only found 
the chat, but have also had the pleasure of studying his habits in a favorite 
warsh not far from my present home. 


40 DIFFICULTIES OF BIRD STUDY. 


mirers will be vastly increased —should take to 
slaughtering them, what a war of extermination it 
would be! With Audubon and Wilson it was dif- 
ferent, as it is with those taxidermists who furnish 
mounted specimens for museums of natural history ; 
but for every student to turn into a butcher would 
be wanton and wicked. One day I got a friend, 
who is rather expert with the gun, to accompany 
me in a long ornithological jaunt, when, I am 
ashamed to say, we killed several birds (and shot 
at more!) concerning whose identity I had been 
in doubt; but it seemed so murderous, so bloody 
a work, that I resolved never to do so again, if I , 
could be forgiven for that offense. Why, the birds 
are among my dearest and most intimate friends ; 
how can I be so hard-hearted as to rob them of 
life? So I advise that the money spent for guns 
and cartridges be spent in visiting some good col- 
lege, or a large city, where an extensive collection 
of mounted birds may be studied at leisure. In 
that way you will be able to clear up ornithologi- 
eal points without resort to bloodshed. 

The explorer for birds will often be parched 
with thirst, almost overcome with heat, pelted 
with rain, stung by mosquitoes, pestered by gnats, 
frightened by snakes, adorned with Spanish needles 


DIFFICULTIES OF BIRD STUDY. 41 


and “stick-tights,” perhaps poisoned with ivy, and 
bitten by frost or winter winds; but, on the whole, 
the delights of scientific research so far exceed the 
difficulties that the naturalist of the true guild 
willingly swallows the bitter for the sake of the 


sweet. 


FIRST MEETINGS. 


To every person there come moments of su- 
preme delight, when some cherished hope has been 
realized, but to few do these epochs come oftener 
than to the enthusiastic student of bird life. Let 
him provide himself with a good opera-glass, hie 
to the woodlands, the fields, the hedges, and espe- 
cially to the banks of a stream or the shores of a_ 
lake, and give himself up to the luxury of form- 
ing new acquaintances. Should he be a neophyte 
in bird-lore and choose a day in the early spring- 
time for his excursion, he may find more new spe- 
cies than he can well introduce himself to; he may 
become sadly perplexed, and even disgusted with 
himself, if not with the birds. It will not require 
a long time to discover how little he knows. Such 
a discovery, however, may not be without value as 
a moral discipline. 

I have often felt amused at my own ignorance 
— I prefer to call it simplicity — when I began to 


study the birds in earnest. I did not know even 
42 


ern 


FIRST MEETINGS. 43 


the song-sparrow when I saw him or heard his 
trill, nor could I distinguish him from his cousin 
of the upland pastures, the grass-finch. It was a 
long time before I learned to tell the chipping spar- 
row and the bush sparrow apart. When I first 
saw the little summer warbler, I supposed he 
must be a goldfinch that had lost the black feath- 
ers of his wings and crown; and that exquisite 
arboreal tilter, the redstart, threw me into a per- 
fect tumult for several days, before I could fix his 
place in my descriptive catalogue; and I was in 
ecstasy when at last I discovered his identity. I 


‘do not make these personal confessions to be 


laughed at by the expert ornithologist, but for 
the encouragement of the beginner, who may be 
tempted to relinquish his study when he sees the 
vastness and complexity of the field. 

First meetings with birds are like first meetings 
with valued and congenial friends ; they are never 
forgotten. How often we say to our dear ones, 
“ Do <you remember our first meeting?” Never 
shall I forget the thrill of pleasure I felt one lovely 


spring day, when I made the acquaintance of one 


of my favorite woodland songsters. It was still 
early in the season, before the leaves had sprung, 
and I was tramping along the banks of the St. 


44 FIRST MEETINGS. 


Joseph River, in Northern Indiana, when, coming 
to a deep, wooded hollow, I espied a flock of birds 
perched quietly on the branches of some oak sap- 
lings. Approaching stealthily, I turned my glass 
upon them, and caught the gleam of a carmine > 
blotch on their chests, worn like a shield, and I 
realized with a thrill of delight that I had at last 
found the rose-breasted grossbeak, descriptions of 
which I had so often read. The large conical 
beak, the white of belly and rump, the black of 
back and head, and the striped appearance of wings 
and tail, put at rest every doubt. Had these birds 
been the inmates of a deaf and dumb asylum, they ; 
could not have been more mute than they were 
that day, sitting quietly on their perches, refusing 
to utter a note, and merely turning their heads 
now and then to look down at me with a sort of » 
contemptuous air. ‘“ Who are you? and what do 
you want here ?” they seemed to say. 

But this first encounter with the rose-breast 
proved more than merely “a chance acquaint- 
ance.’ A few weeks later, as I was again stroll- 
ing along the river, I heard a clear, joyous bird 
song, having a very human intonation. “It must 
be a robin,” I said to myself, and was about to pass 
on, when it struck me that there was a peculiar re- 


FIRST MEETINGS. 45 


sonance in the tones that was not characteristic of 
that bird’s song, and so I turned aside to reconnoi- 
tre. My delight can be imagined when I descried 
my friend with the carmine shield, perched on a 
small tree, singing away as cheerily as you please. 
And what a hearty, full-toned song it was, with an 
irresistible wizardry all its own! His large, horny 
beak seemed to impart a peculiar sonorousness to 
his tones, which rang through the vale in a rich 
variety of blended recitative and circumflex move- 
ments, now loud and clear, and now soft and 
modulated. There was also an air of absent- 
mindedness about his song, such as one notices in 
the minstrelsy of the white-throated sparrow and 
the Baltimore oriole. During the summer I saw 
and heard many of these birds, and found several 
of their nests. 

My first meeting with the Blackburnian warbler, 
by many considered the most attractive of the fam- 
ily, was on a fall day. Glancing up into the wil- 
lows, I caught a gleam of black and _ brilliant 
orange, the latter blazing in the sunshine like 
flame. How the bird prevented his plumage from 
being set on fire was more than I could under- 
stand. Several females, scarcely less beautiful, 


flitted about with their gorgeously arrayed hus- 


46 FIRST MEETINGS. 


bands. These birds were not wary and bent on 
concealment, like so many other members of the 
family. Indeed, I have reason to believe that they 
were fully conscious of their attractions; for they 
let themselves drop to the lower branches, so that 
I could inspect them closely as they disported their 
plumes at such angles in the sunshine as to pro- 
duce the most brilliant effect. Natty little dandies 
that they were! 

According to Mr. Ridgway, these tiny bird- 


sprites are sometimes seen in Greenland during | 


the summer. I should like to see one perched 
on an iceberg on a sunshiny day. 

Flitting before me in the tangle of vines, bram- 
bles and bushes on the steep bank of the river be- 


fore referred to, I saw, one day of early spring, a — 


bevy of little feathered strangers, whom (I use 
whom because birds seem so much like people) I 
quickly identified as the black and yellow, the 
black-throat blue, and the black-throated green 
warblers — making quite a brilliant galaxy. Since 
that day I have often met these pleasant acquaint- 
ances, but at every new meeting I still feel some- 
thing of the thrill I felt at my first introduction to 
them. They did not tarry long in that latitude, 
but, cheerily bidding us good-by, winged their flight 


se eae ee ae ee eae eS ee ee 


FIRST MEETINGS. 47 


to their summer habitats in Northern Michigan and 
along the shores of Hudson’s Bay. 

I wish you could have been with me one lovely 
spring day as I drove along a pleasant country 
road. Seeing a strange little bird hopping about 
in the grass of an orchard, I handed the lines to 
my companion, leaped from the carriage and vault- 
ing over the rail fence, soon got the feathered fairy 
within the field of my glass. <A beautiful bird it 
was ; back, slaty blue, streaked with black ; breast 
and sides, black; throat and belly, pure white ; 
central crown patch, sides of breast, and — now 
that he lifts his wings —rump, gleaming yellow. 
I exclaimed at once, “ A yellow-rumped warbler!” 
a bird of fine mien and blithe bearing, and one 
that I had been wanting to see for many mouths. 
He is called the myrtle warbler by Ridgway : Den- 
droica coronata. On the twenty-fifth of October 
I met another chance acquaintance. A _ rather 
plump, short-billed bird was greedily devouring 
dogwood berries in the tree above me, scaling off 
the pulp, and dropping the pits; but the sun shone 
on him at such an angle that I could not decide as 
to his color, though his form and mien proclaimed 
him a new bird to me. Presently, much to my re- 
gret, he flew away, but I rushed after him through 


48 FIRST MEETINGS. 


brier and brake; and when I reached an open space, 
what should I see before me, perched on a tall 
bush, but a rosy-hued bird, preening his feathers 
as quietly as if he had never been frightened in 
his life! My pulses were all a-flutter. I had made 
the acquaintance of the purple finch. And there 
by his side sat his little wife marked with brown 
and white stripes. You may guess my first excla- 
mation when I got home! 


BIRDS ON THE WING. 


Every student should learn to identify the birds 
on the wing as well as “in the bush.” The flight 
of these citizens of the air is a most interesting 
study, and will amply repay all the attention given 
to it. Even the most careless observer cannot have 
failed to notice that birds of different species do 
not behave in the same way while propelling 
themselves through the air. Some spread out 
their wings and sail gracefully overhead, like the 
hawks and buzzards, while others keep their pin- 
ions in constant motion; some sweep onward with 
long, leisurely wing-strokes, and others beat the 
air very rapidly. 

But let us speak more specifically of the flight of 
various families and species. There are the wood- 
peckers: Observe that redhead beating across the 
clover field to the distant woodland. He goes by. 
plunges and not with uniform velocity. Now he 
presses his wings close to his sides as he darts for- 


ward like an arrow, then he quickly spreads his 
49 


50 BIRDS ON THE WING. 


wings to give himself a new impulse; and this 
process he repeats until he nears the end of his airy 
voyage, when he describes a graceful upward curve 
and flings himself bodily against the bole of a tree. 
One might almost say —and I think Maurice 
Thompson has hinted as much — that the redhead 
gallops through the air rather than sails. 

The hairy and downy woodpeckers fly in the 
same way; so does the flicker, although my obser- 
vation has been that his separate plunges, or flight- 
impulses, are not so well accentuated as those of 
his redheaded relatives. He seems to keep his 
wings spread out more continuously. While I am 
speaking of the flight of the golden-wing, I wish to 
add that I have often watched him descending 
from the tops of the tall trees to the fence or the 
ground, and I do not know that I have ever wit- 
nessed a more graceful performance even among 
my winged acquaintances. He sweeps down ina 
gentle curve, moving by longer or shorter impulses 
of flight, his handsome figure and mottled plumage 
making a beautiful picture to the eye. It is the 
very poetry of flight. Would that all had the gift 
of “coming down” so gracefully! In this respect 
birds are our peers; they are quite expert at per- 


forming this feat of descension, if not condescension. 


=a 


BIRDS ON THE WING. AT 


Quite different is the flight of the familiar blue 
jays, which seem to make hard work of it, keeping 
their wings in constant motion, as if their lives de- 
pended on their continuous efforts. And they do 
not seem to make very swift progress either, al- 
though their flight is more rapid and less labored 
than is apparent at a distance. 

The robin is quite swift on the wing, especially 
for short flights. For longer efforts, while he 
moves more rapidly than the blue jay, his passage 
through the air would not be considered graceful. 
Yet I have often been surprised, not to say alarmed, 
at the recklessness of his plunges through the 
thickest parts of the woods, expecting every mo- 
ment to see him dash his brains out against an ob- 
struction; but, somehow, he contrives to steer his 
feathered bark safely through the most intricate 
tangles. 

The like may be said of the little snowbird, 
which displays wonderful skill in dodging branches 
and trees, as he dashes like plumed lghtning 
through the woods. But for woodcraft dexterity 
of this kind the redstart carries the palm. How 
often have I seen two male redstarts pursuing each 
other around and around through the dense weft 
of branches and twigs with a swiftness that the 


U. OF ILL. LIB. 


5? BIRDS ON THE WING. 


eye cannot always follow, threading the foliage 
with black and gold like shuttles gone wild! And 
yet they will soon emerge without the loss of a 
feather, and alighting on perches not far apart, 
hurl their scorn at each other in loud, explosive 
trills. 

Have you noticed that our native sparrows, al- 
though some of them are quite expert on the wing 
for short distances, seldom indulge in long flights ? 
There is quite a difference between the short, zig- 
zag plunges and starts of the song sparrow and the 
long, swift passages of the English sparrows from 
the house to the woods and back again. The fox 
sparrow, the grass-finch, the bush sparrow and the 
grasshopper sparrow only fly far enough, as a rule, 
to find refuge from a real or imaginary enemy. 
One would suppose that birds which are not more 
inured to long-continued efforts would become 
greatly wearied during their semi-annual migra- 
tions. It is probable, however, that they do not at 
any time make long journeys, but flit at easy stages 
from one feeding place to another until their des- 
tination is reached. 

Much as most people despise the English spar- 
row, all of us must concede that he is agile on the 


wing. (Why might not one coin a word and say 


BIRDS ON THE WING. 53 


that he is a dexterous wingster?) One winter day, 
when the wind was blowing a gale from the west, 
I saw one of these aliens tacking in the storm. 
He wanted to move at right angles with the cur- 
rent of the wind, and how did-he go about it? He 
lifted himself lightly into the air, thrusting his 
head into the very teeth of the wind at an acute 
angle with the current, and then darted swiftly 
away, moving sidewise, in easy, undulatory flight, 
veering very little from the course he had marked 
out for himself. 

Few birds are more agile on the wing than the 
swilts and swallows. They spend a large part of 
their time tilting in the air, catching insects as 
they wheel on in their swift course. How many 
miles do you suppose they fling behind them in a 
single day? Doubtless you have often watched 
the cliff swallows as they perform their feats of 
scaling in the air. How gracefully they glide, now 
sweeping down a sheer declivity, now mounting 
upward in an almost vertical line, now poising a 
moment as if resting on the wings of nothing, and 
anon making another swift plunge that causes one’s 
head to swim! The swifts move their wings in 
short, quick strokes, while the strokes of the swal- 


' lows are longer and made more leisurely. 


— - -BIRDS ON THE WING. 


There is a wide difference between the evolu- 
tions of these birds and those of the little goldfinch, 
which, as some one has said, festoons the airs with 
graceful loops of flight. Listen to his lightsome 
song as he rocks himself on the buoyant ether. 
“ Pe-chick-o-pee, pe-chick-o-pee,’ he carols, which 
may be freely translated into, “ Bless me, this is 
pleasant, riding on the wind!” What other bird 
would ever think of converting the atmosphere into 
a portable rocking-chair? One day a friend with 
whom I was walking, after watching a goldfinch 
sweeping overhead, exclaimed that its manner of 
flight reminded him of riding on a switch-back, and 
it seemed to me that the simile was quite apt. 

The wing-feats of the brown thrasher, the cat- 
bird, the thrushes, the towhee-bunting and the 
wrens consist mostly of short, fluttering spurts of 
flight, while the kinglets and warblers flit fairy-like 
among the branches of bushes and trees. No one 
can have failed to notice the rapid wing-strokes of 
the meadow larks as they dart across the fields or 
balance themselves in mid-air. Tell me why the 
titlark dashes like forked lightning across the sky, 
giving you the impression that he must have lost 
his way in the trackless ocean of air. 


. Whether men shall ever succeed in constructing 


BIRDS ON THE WING. 55 


air-ships that can be successfully operated is an 
open question; but long before such inventions 
were even dreamed of by the human mind the 
Creator had solved the problem by making our 
feathered aérial navigators. How do birds propel 
themselves through their native element? It will 
be seen that they are wonderfully adapted to that 
purpose. Many of my older readers may already 
understand the philosophy of bird flight, as far as 
it has been explained by scientists ; but for younger 
readers and others not informed on the subject, I 
will say a few words in regard to it. 

Of course the best fliers are very light and buoy- 
ant, their bodies being quite small compared with 
the bulk of their feathers. This causes them to 
float with lttle effort on the air. In proportion to 
their weight they present a large surface to the up- 
buoying atmosphere. ‘Their wings serve as oars 
to beat the air with, and also increase the amount 
of resistance to the atmosphere, while their tails 
answer the purpose of a keel with which to steer 
their feathered craft. Then, by turning their 
heads from side to side and variously inclining 
their wings, they help to guide themselves. 

But how do they contrive to elevate and lower 
themselves so deftly and easily? That may be 


56 BIRDS ON THE WING. 


readily explained. Within the bird’s body, con- 
nected with the lungs, are at least nine small 
air-sacs. ‘These air-sacs, which are wonderful ana- 
tomical contrivances, are also connected by air 
passages in the best fliers, with many of the bones, 
which are hollow. When the bird wishes to rise 
he inhales the air into his lungs, whence it rushes 
into the air-sacs located in various parts of the 
body, and thence into the cavities of the bones. 
In this way every hollow space becomes quickly 
filled with the light, expanding air, making the 
plumed tilter more and more buoyant. Of course 
the bird must mount upward hke an inflated 
balloon, especially if shghtly assisted by the wings. 
When he wishes to descend, he simply reverses 
the process; that is, by contracting the proper 
muscles, he exhales the air from his body, and 
down he glides gently and lightly, or swiftly, as he 
chooses. By his outspread wings he holds himself 
safely in check, so that he does not dash himself to 
pieces on the ground. How wonderful is the law 
of adaptation ! 


MY WOODLAND. 


‘¢ Thus, without theft, I reap another’s field; 

Thus, without tilth, I house a wondrous yield, 

And heap my heart with quintuple crops concealed.” 
SIDNEY LANIER. 


THE sense of ownership does not always belong 
most palpably to those who possess. In a very im- 
portant respect, many persons who own the most 
really own the least. They have nothing but a 
mercenary tenure of the property they call theirs. 
Legally speaking, I have no title-deed to a single 
rood of ground on the face of the earth, but by 
virtue of that higher spiritual law announced by 
the apostle, “ All things are yours,” Iam the happy 
possessor of about eighty acres of woodland. If I 
may use a paradox, I believe I own it more than the 
owner himself does. As one who loves nature, and 
who knows every nook and angle, every secluded 
haunt flecked with the sunshine that filters through 
the over-arching branches, every green, shaded hol- 


low, and every pond where the feathered and 
57 


58 MY WOODLAND. 


furred tenants of the place come to drink and — 


bathe — I certainly have a preémption claim upon 
this timber-tract. For, while I sometimes meet a 
man with a gun on his shoulder, or the legal 
owner prowling about in search of trespassers, I 
am the only person, so far as I know, who haunts 
the retreat for pure love of it and its natural 
resources. 

But I do not believe that the feeling of owner- 
ship is only on my side. At least, I wonder some- 
times if the woodland itself does not fee] that I 
belong to it, “such mutual recognition, vaguely 


9 


sweet, there is between us.” It seems to fold its 
arms about me, whisper its secrets into my ear, 
and with a mute caress of special fondness, say : 
‘Tam thine, and thou art mine.” Sometimes in 
the early spring time, when I thread my way along 
its winding paths, it seems to entreat me thus: 
“Pluck this anemone, and wear it on your heart, 
and may its white petals be the symbol of our love 
for each other.” 

In my rambles a feeling of profound pity some- 
times comes over me — pity for’ those unhappy 
beings who are cooped up in the crowded city, liv- 
ing in the narrow rectangle of four walls, and who 


do not own such a woodland. While I am a little 


MY WOODLAND. 59 


jealous of my woodland, I am unselfish enough to 
wish that every one could take his aching head 
and bruised heart to such a tender nurse. God 
speed the time when the bans may be announced 
for the marriage of every son and daughter of 
Adam to some lovely spot in nature’s green domain ! 

It is delicious — this sense of exclusive posses- © 
sion. How often as I have hurried across the fields 
to my wildwood, to get away from the bustle and 
din and worry of the city, have I felt as Emerson 
must have felt when he wrote his poem beginning 
with the line: “ Good-by, proud world, I’m going 
home!” Listen as he sings of the sequestered 
haunt for which his heart was sighing : 


‘¢ A secret nook in a pleasant land, 
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned ; 
Where arches green, the livelong day, 
Echo the blackbird’s roundelay, 

And vulgar feet have never trod — 

A spot that is sacred to thought and God. 


‘¢QOh, when I am safe in my sylvan home, 

I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome; 

I laugh at the lore and pride of man, 

At the sophist schools and the learnéd clan, 
For what are they all, in their high conceit, 
When man in the bush with God may meet.” 


60 MY WOODLAND. 


I fear some of my readers may think, from what 
has been said, that my woodland is an exceptionally 
beautiful and romantic spot; but that is not the 
case. ‘To many eyes it would seem a very ordinary 
tract of timber. There are no rocky glens or 
erottoes, no sequestered dingles, no purling brooks, 
no dark, solitary gorges, to lend variety to the 
haunt. For the most part it is a level area, with 
here and there a slight dip or basin, where ponds 
are formed in wet weather and where the birds 
often come to drink and bathe. A large part of 
the woodland is covered with a thick growth of 
underbrush, from which the saplings and tall trees 
lift their stems, as if growing from a deep soil of 
verdure that breaks forth again in emerald on the 
swaying branches lifted to the sky. A slightly 
human aspect is given to the place by several 
grass-grown and leaf-strewn wagon roads, seldom 
used, that wind through the thickets, in many 
spots beneath archways of foliage and between 
colonnades of tree-trunks. A few paths worn by 
some four-footed animals wind through the tangle- 
wood, and render one’s progress somewhat less 
difficult. 

To the appreciative rambler this sylvan retreat 
is by no means commonplace; it is nothing less 


MY WOODLAND. 61 


than a naturalist’s elysium. In the dim cathedral 
light of the “wildwood privacies,” the birds find 
many a quiet boudoir in which to hold their trysts, 
or solemn conclavyes, or tell the old-new story of 
love, build their nests, and rear their children ; 


9 


while in the “leafy galleries” of the trees and 
saplings they find perches from which to chant 
their voluntaries. How often I have loitered along 
the fringe of the woods or in its “ braided dusks,” 


and listened while 


‘‘ The little birds sang as if it were 
The one day of summer in all the year.” 


Thus far I have spoken chiefly of the eastern 
part of this woodland tract. Westward, beyond 
the railroad and a wagon highway, there stretches 
a broad belt of timber for fully half a mile if not 
more, which differs somewhat in character from 
the portion already described; that is, it is almost 
wholly clear of underbrush, while the tall oaks, 
hickories and other trees stand so close together 
in most places, that their branches interlock over- 
head. Near the western extremity there is a shady 
hollow that zigzags through the whole width of 
the woods, and then joins another hollow at the 


south, forming a green glade by the timber’s bor- 


62 MY WOODLAND. 


der, through which a spring-fed brook loiters and 
sings. Sometimes I ramble in this part of the 
woods and sometimes in the other, as I list, feeling 
that there is no area in which I am not a welcome 
guest. 

Yes, I always feel at home in this retreat, the 
sense of strangeness having long since worn away. 
I have cultivated the acquaintance not only of the 
woodland itself, so that it seems like a personal 
friend, but also of the live creatures that dwell 
here; and pleasant companions they have been. 
There are rabbits, chipmunks, red and gray squir- 
rels here in abundance, for they are protected by 
law; but I have given my attention chiefly to the 
birds. In some parts of the woodland I seldom 
find a bird, and others seem to be avoided by them 
entirely. Why this is so I cannot explain. Much 
as I have questioned my winged associates, not 
one of them has taken me into his confidence on 
this point. 

However, there are other sections of the woods 
that are favorite haunts for the birds. For instance, 
at the edge of a thick tanglewood, where nearly all 
the tall trees and saplings have been cut down, 
but where there is a dense growth of bushes and 


briers, feathered creatures of some kind may 


MY WOODLAND. 63 


always be found, summer and winter, rain or 
shine. It would be strange if in a place like this 
one did not find many rare species. It may seem 
very conceited to say so, but I have almost con- 
cluded that a bird that cannot be found here is 
scarcely worth finding. I am tempted to call it a 
bird microcosm, and be done. How many times 
as I have strolled through this rambling ground 
the unexpected has happened! I cannot forbear 
making special mention of two or three of these 
experiences, which memory holds so pleasantly in 
leash. 

One day in early spring I had a glorious. sur- 
prise. Approaching this spot, I was suddenly 
brought to a standstill by hearing a bird-song that 
drifted sweetly to my ears from the copse. It was 
new to me. Oh, what a blithe, liquid melody it 
was! The tones were full, clear and bubbling. 
Such a ringing note of gladness ran through them 
that the sunshine seemed to grow brighter, the 
leaves of the bushes and trees fluttered merrily as 
if they had been caught in the lyrical spell, and 
the whole woodland appeared to be in league with 
Kcho’s tricksy voices. 

With quickened footsteps and fluttering pulses 
I pushed my way into the bushy inclosure. There 


~ 


64 - MY WOODLAND. 


was the little minstrel — the winged Orpheus — 
perched on a sapling and not sufficiently startled 
by my presence to cease his song. I soon got all 
his markings with my opera glass, and had the 
pleasure of studying him in his singing attitudes. 
He turned out to be Kirtland’s warbler. I feel 
oreatly elated over this discovery, for all the books 
declare that he is a rare bird, and not one of the 
many works on ornithology that I have studied, 
so much as refers to his song. Besides, I have 
been a diligent reader of those charming writers, 
Bradford Torrey, John Burroughs, Maurice Thomp- 
son, Charles C. Abbott and Olive Thorne Miller, 
but I do not think that one of them even mentions 
this bird. If any other observer has heard his 
cheerful lay, he seems to have kept the secret to 
himself so far as the world of popular readers is 
concerned.* 

* At the time I was really not aware that I had made so rare a discovery. 
More than one letter from expert ornithologists has reached me, congratulat- 
ing me on having seen Kirtland’s warbler, and especially on having heard 
his song. Even at the risk of appearing egotistical, I will quote from a 
letter written me by Bradford Torrey after he had read the foregoing, which 
was first published in the Zllustrated Christian Weekly. He says: ‘* I would 
give all my old boots, and all my new ones, for a good look at a Kirtland’s 
warbler. But I don’t expect to have my wish granted — in this life, at all 
events. I congratulate you ona great piece of good fortune. Now if you 
could find it breeding! That would be an addition to science, wouldn’t it? ” 

It would be worth one’s while to explore the whole American continent 


to find this rare and beautiful warbler’s nest. Mr. Ridgway in his manual 
says that its summer residence is not known. A very courteous personal 


MY WOODLAND. 65 


In the same part of this woodland I found a pair 
of purple finches one autumn day; while in the 
spring one male and three females remained in a 
dogwood sapling just long enough for me to make 
sure of their identity, and then darted into the 
woods, where I was unable to find them with all 
my “beating the bush.” A beautiful little green, 
black-capped, fly-catching warbler gladdened my 
eyes as he flitted in the blackberry thicket one day 
in May. | 

There is another place in these woods where my 
search for birds is invariably rewarded ; it is right 
in the sylvan depths, where two grass-grown roads 
intersect, close to a small wet-weather pond. Here 
in the winter time I always meet my woodland 
intimates, the snow-birds, the tree-sparrows, the 
erested titmice, the white-breasted nuthatches, and 
the hairy and downy woodpeckers. In the little 
pond near by, the snow-birds were in the habit of 


letter from an intelligent writer in Chicago runs as follows: “ I have re- 
cently read with pleasure your article entitled ‘My Woodland.’ .. . I was 
much interested in your statement that another specimen of the rare Kirt- 
land’s warbler had come to light, and that you had been so fortunate as to 
hear his song, a fact that I have never seen recorded before. Your obser- 
vation of this warbler, and particularly a description of his song, certainly 
should be recorded in some magazine devoted to ornithology. . . . In Vol. 
IV. of The Auk, Mr. Purdie gives an account of nine specimens of Kirtland’s 
warbler to that date (July, 1879), and I do not think any other record bas 
been made up to the date of your observations.’’? Surely the reader will 
pardon my vanity in publishing these excerpts. 


66 MY WOODLAND. 


taking a cold bath last winter, even when there 
was a thin coating of ice on it, except around the 
margin. It made me shiver to see them paddling 
in the icy water. | 

A few days ago — it was the fifteenth of Septem- 
ber —I had become almost discouraged, for I had 
been prowling about fora long time in the woods 
without finding any new or rare birds; but I 
decided at last to visit this spot, hoping fortune 
would favor my quest. And she did. I had not 
come within five rods of the place before I heard the 
familiar “ How-do-you-do? ” of the chickadees and 
nuthatches, mingling with the varied chipping of a 
platoon of warblers. They had taken the bushes 
and saplings by storm, and beautiful indeed was 
the sight as they flitted and twinkled amid the 
foliage, their brilliant hues catching the sunlight 
and flashing it back to the eye. 

The following is a list of the warblers I saw in that 
covey: the blue yellow-back, the blue golden-wing, 
the magnolia, the Tennessee, the black-throated 
green, the Connecticut, the green black-cap, the 
redstart and the black and white creeper, besides 
several other species that baffled all my efforts to 
keep them in the field of my glass long enough to 
identify them. A red-eyed vireo seemed to find 


MY WOODLAND. 67 


the warblers congenial company, for he remained 
with them wherever they went. All these birds 
had donned their autumn toilets, some of them so 
different from the apparel they wear on their spring 
migrations. The student must learn the markings 
of the birds for both seasons, as well as the plu- 
mage of the young. 

On the same day I had a bit of experience which 
might have been an adventure —but it wasn’t. 
Karler in the day I had heard some one shooting 
in the woods, and was surprised at the boldness of 
the hunter, for in many places boards had been | 
put up bearing the announcement: “No shoot- 
ing allowed on these premises.” ‘The rule, I had 
understood, was rigidly enforced. Once I caught 
sight of the trespasser carrying a gun on his shoul- 
der, and hurried away, determined to put as great 
a lineal distance between him and myself as _pos- 
sible, lest I should be mistaken for a law-breaker. 

The hours sped, and I was ogling my flock of 
warblers, when I caught sight of a man approaching 
me along the meandering path. I felt intuitively 
that he was the owner of the woodland (the legal 
owner, I mean) on the lookout for trespassers. I 
greeted him with as much urbanity as I could com- 
mand. He scarcely returned my salutation, but 


68 MY WOODLAND. 


asked sharply: “ Are you the fellow that’s been 
doin’ this shootin’ in these woods?” _ him 
calling an ornithologist a “ fellow!” 

I suppose I blushed, not only “ to the roots of my 
hair,” as they say in novels, but also to the top of 
my scalp. Of course I made my negative assur- 
ance quite positive. “No, sir,” I said, “I never 
use a gun; never!” I felt, however, that an 
explanation of my presence was due him, and so I 
continued, blushing still more vividly: “[—IJIam 
in the habit of studying the birds and writing them 
up for the papers; but I never shoot anything.” 
He looked suspiciously at the opera glass in my 
hand, and then at the book-bag dangling at my 
side; but at last his inspection seemed to satisfy 
him that I had told the truth. After expressing, 
in somewhat caustic terms, his opinion of the man 
who was shooting his squirrels, he left me to study 
my birds in peace. ‘Thus it will be seen that even 
a harmless ornithologist might have an adventure 
that would not be quite to his taste — he might be 
ordered out of his own woodland. 


A SPARROW QUARTETTE. 


HAVING on several occasions, in the company of 
friends, attempted a eulogy on our native sparrows, 
I have invariably been compelled to stop suddenly 
and explain that I did not mean that interloper 
from across the sea, the English sparrow. It was 
the look of scorn on the faces of my auditors that 
made the parenthesis necessary. Many persons 
seem scarcely aware that we have native birds of 
the sparrow family ; nor do they know what charm- 
ing songsters they are, differing vastly, both in 
manners and qualities of voice, from the British 
import. One day while talking with a friend in 
his study, I suddenly sprang to my feet and 
exclaimed : 

“Oh! listen to the songs of those sparrows. 
How delightful!” 

My friend lives on the outskirts of a country 
town. 

“Sparrows!” he echoed, sarcastically. “ Those 


sparrows are the biggest nuisances in the country.” 
69 


70 A SPARROW QUARTETTE. 


“ You are thinking of the English sparrow, sir,” 
I responded, just a trifle sharply ; “I refer to the 
American song-sparrow ; hark!” 

At that moment the melodious trill of one of 
those minstrels was waited through the open door, 
with asweet, far-away cadence all its own, and when 
I indicated to my companion that this was the song 
to which I referred, there was a marked change in 
his tone, as he said: 

“Oh, that? Yes, that is very pretty.” 

I was strongly tempted to deliver him a homily 
then and there on our native sparrows, but conclu- 
ded that perhaps a paper on the subject might find 
a larger and more appreciative audience. 

Only four of these birds will form the subject of 
our present study, and they make a quartette that 
we Americans need not be ashamed of. We begin 
with that blithe and familiar little friend in plumes, 
the chipping sparrow. He may be readily identi- - 
fied by his chestnut cap, with its frontlet of black 
and its grayish-white band on either side, giving 
him a cavalier appearance. A blackish line runs 
through the eye and back overthe ear. His breast 
and under parts are a pale ash, unmarked; his 
back is streaked with black, bay and brown, and he 
has two whitish wing-bars. To guard the young 


A SPARROW QUARTETTE. _ TL 


bird student against error, I will add that the 
breasts of the young birds are striped quite exten- 
sively with dusky and brown. 

Have you heard the song of the chippy? It is 
_ @ very simple jingle, and can scarcely be called a 
song. On a bright, sunshiny day in spring, he may 
be seen perched on the ridge of a roof, or an outer 
or upper limb of a tree, trilling away industriously 
for an hour at a time if not disturbed. The ditty 
reminds one of the peal of a string of small brass 
bells, and though not precisely musical, it has a - 
dreamy, far-off melody about it that brings haunt- — 
ing memories of one’s boyhood days, when one 
played on the grassy slopes or along the willow- 
fringed brook. I have heard that monotonous trill 
at night, coming from the maples along the street, 
and have no doubt that the bird sings in his dreams, 
so replete is his budget of notes. 

The chipping sparrow is a brave little warrior, 
often attacking birds of greater size when they 
insult him or intrude on his domains. A friend 
tells me about a battle he witnessed between a 
chippy and an English sparrow. For a long time 
the contest went on, and it was doubtful how it 
would end; but at last the British combatant 
received a stinging blow that struck terror to his 


Tes: A SPARROW QUARTETTE. 


heart and caused him to beat a hasty retreat, leay- 
ing chippy in possession of the field. It was 
laughable, my friend says, to watch the little fellow 
plume himself on his victory, looking up at the 
spectator of the melée with a mute appeal for — 
applause. 

Chippy has a little sylvan cousin to whom we 
must next pay our respects. The two birds may 
be easily confounded by the inaccurate observer, 
but the careful one will soon detect the marks of 
difference. While the crown of the bush-sparrow 
is of a chestnut cast, like that of the chippy, there 
is no black on the forehead or through the eye, 
while the whitish superciliary bands are not so 
definitely marked, but seem to be merged imper- 
ceptibly into the brown above. The bush-sparrow 
is also of a more reddish cast than his little relative, 
and his bill is pale reddish instead of black. 

Mr. Burroughs calls this bird the wood or bush- 
sparrow, although it is called the field-sparrow in 
all the ornithological manuals with which I am 
acquainted, and it is well to remember this differ- 
ence in homenclature when the student begins the 
work of identification. 

The song of this little wood nymph is a fine, pen- 
sive strain, very sweet and pleasing, beginning with 


A SPARROW QUARTETTE. to 


two, sometimes three prolonged notes, followed by 
a rapid trill. It may be represented fairly by the 
following combination: fe-e-e, fe-e-e, fa-fe-e-e, fe- 
fefe/ dying out in a cadence. In the middle 
of the day, when most birds are mute, this fine, 
silvery run may be heard at the edge of a wood- 
land, chiming, if I may so speak, with the bright 
sunshine itself, of which it seems to form a part. 
Usually there is an interval of silence between the 
separate runs, but one day while strolling along the 
borders of a wood, I was pleasantly surprised to 
hear one of these little minstrels, in a transport of 
musical excitement, repeat his song three or four 
times in one continuous strain and in an unusually 
gay and sprightly tone. His song reminds one of 
the peal of a string of silver bells. 

We have only to step out from the edge of the 
woods to the adjoining clover-field to form the 
acquaintance of another member of the sparrow 
family, whose exquisite solos will soon attract the 
attention of every bird-lover. Perhaps you will 
first hear his canticle wafted to you from the grass 
beyond the fence, while he himself remains invis- 
ible, like some shy elf; but he soon appears, select- 
ing a perch on a stump or a fence-stake in full 
view, and then, throwing back his head, prying 


74 A SPARROW QUARTETTE. 


open his mandibles, and distending his throat 
almost to bursting, he salutes you with his most 
elaborate lyrical effort. 

He is commonly known as the grass-finch or 
vesper-sparrow, though called by Mr. Burroughs 
and Maurice Thompson the field-sparrow. He is 
larger than his little relatives just described, and if 
you are in doubt as to his identity, step close to 
him, and as he darts in a zigzag course down into 
the grass or to a more distant stake, notice the 
white lateral feathers of his tail, which he opens 
and closes like a fan. But you must learn to rec- 
ognize him without driving him from his song- 
perch. By the aid of an opera glass you may 
obtain a good view of his breast, which is white, 
slightly tinged with buff, and thickly marked with 
dusky streaks, gathering quite profusely at the 
center, though not into a blotch, as in the case of 
another sparrow soon to be described. Then, too, 
there is often an arch or curve about the throat 
and neck, and a flatness about the head, that will 
enable one at once to identify him, just as one 
knows a familiar horse at a distance by some pecu- 
liarity of contour or mien. 

This bird is also called the bay-winged bunting, 
on account of the reddish stripe that tips his wing- 


A SPARROW QUARTETTE. 1D 


coverts. He makes his home in upland pasture- 
fields, where he sings his matins and vespers and 
mid-day madrigals, often in company with the 
meadow-larks, bobolinks, and black-throated bunt- 
ings. I should represent the song thus: K-e-0-0-o, 
k-e-e-e, ke-ke-ke! ‘Vhe second syllable pitched very 
high and swelling into a crescendo with a sort 
of swinging movement. I cannot describe the 
pleasure I have derived during the spring and 
summer from the songs of this bird, which were 
waited to me every morning from the clover-field | 
beyond the commons, in the rear of my house; 
they were so sadly sweet and sweetly sad. 

_ Birds, like people, exercise some choice in their 
habitats. Leaving the upland fields and making 
our way to the meadow, the marsh, or the creek 
bottom, we no longer find the grass-finch, but are 
more than compensated by meeting another spar- 
row, whose voice has more compass and whose 
songs are more varied and sprightly, if not sweeter 
in intonation. I am free to say that the song- 
sparrow is my favorite of the household to which 
he belongs, not only because of the richness of his 
song, but also because of the constancy and fidelity 
with which he pursues his vocation as a vocal 
artist. “ What’s the use of having a profession if 


-76 A SPARROW QUARTETTE, 


you don’t follow it?” I hear him say, as he bursts 
into a splendid trill that echoes across the intervale 
and wakens every brownie and water-witch of the 
lowlands. 

While many other birds are chary, and even par- 
simonious, of their songs, this sparrow gives us the 
benetit of his voice at almost all seasons of the 
year. I have often listened to him in February, 
and of course during the months of spring, and 
also in August, September, October, November, 
December and January, thus completing the cir- 
clet of the months of the year. In the autumn 
there is often a softness and a pensiveness about 
his trills and cadences not to be heard at other 
times, as if he were sorry that winter, with its 
storms and cold weather, were so near at hand, or 
as if he were calling back memories of the blos- 
soming spring. 

What variety and versatility there are in his 
vocal efforts in the song season! What resonance 
of tone! ‘The poets have sung the praises of the 
skylark, the nightingale, the cuckoo, and the 
mocking-bird ; who will write an ode worthy of 
the varied trills and quavers and ecstatic outbursts 
of the song-sparrow? At this very moment, as I 
sit writing on a grassy slope beneath the trees, I 


A SPARROW QUARTETTE. (We: 


eatch the rhythmic notes of a half-dozen of these 
minstrels coming up from the marsh below, no two 
of them singing the same tune; and I realize that 
I have been entangled in the filigree of rich melody, 
a delighted captive. There! I have just caught a 
new variation, one that I have never heard before, 
though I have listened to these birds by the hour 
and through many seasons. | 

To show you how rich and varied the trills of 
the song-sparrow are, I should lke to conduct you 
to a certain haunt I know in Northern Indiana on 
the banks of a clear and beautiful river. It is a 
spot where I have tried to untangle more than one 
mesh of song from a dozen musical throats when 
the sparrow orchestra was in full blast. Listen! 
do you hear those soft, subdued notes coming up 
from the willows? The opening syllables might 
be represented in this wise: C%o-0-y, c-o-y, coy ! fol- 
lowed by a rapid run in nearly, if not quite, the 
same key, the entire song having a slightly gur- 
eling intonation, like music filtered through a net- 
work of spray. It is very mournful, and makes 
one think of the strains of Orpheus playing on his 
lyre to his lost love, Eurydice. What bird can it 
be? On a nearer approach we espy a song-sparrow 


in the bushes, and if we remain quiet, we may hear 


78 A SPARROW QUARTETTE. 


him repeat his threnody. But now that he has 
been: discovered he flits to a higher perch, throws 
back his head, and makes a supreme vocal effort, 
and lo! the song is changed, having become a rich, 
resonant roundelay that almost wakes the sylvan 
echoes. Presently he turns about and treats us 
to another variation, which may be represented 
thus: Ch-e-e, ch-e-e, che-we-e-e, che-we, che-we, che-we ! 
dying out in a cadence of exquisite sweetness. 
He has at least a dozen different tunes in his 
song-quiver. 

I have made note of quite a number of these 
variations, but do not feel that I have exhausted 
his treasury of song. Sometimes his roundel 
opens with a trill, followed by several long notes, 
and closes with another trill; at other times there 
is one long syllable, succeeded by a protracted 
trill; often there are two long notes at the begin- 
ning, then a cluster of short, staccato notes in the 
same key, as near as I can tell, followed by a per- 
fect spray of music in a different key altogether. 
The longer notes are sometimes pure, clear, and 
resonant, and anon they become a fine, ecstatic, 
quivering outburst, as if the musician had broken 
a string of his harp. One day I heard one of 


these birds singing on the ridge of a barn roof, and, 


A SPARROW QUARTETTE. 79 


strangely enough, he closed every trill with a ris- 
ing inflection, just as a speaker who gets into a 
sing-song habit, often closes every sentence with 
an upward slide. 

Could the four vocalists described in this paper 
be heard singing simultaneously — the chippy on 
a dead twig, the bush-sparrow at the border of the 
woodland, the grass-finch from a fence-stake, and 
the song-sparrow on a tall bush in the bottom — no 
loyal American would have cause to blush for the 
choral of the sparrow quartette. 


LYRISTS OF A SUBURB. 


UNTIL some attention has been paid to the mat- 
ter, one would scarcely believe how many birds 
may be seen and studied to advantage in the sub- 
urbs of a town. It has been my happy lot to live 
in such a suburb for several years, with a stretch — 
of commons back of the house, several clover-fields 
not far away, and a large oak-grove within half a 
block. My feathered fellow-tenants have been a 
perennial source of delight to me. How they have 
sung and prattled, pouring liquid melody from 
their warm hearts! It is for the purpose of incit- 
ing others to a most delightful study — one that 
many persons can pursue at their very doors — 
that I shall briefly sketch some of my observations 
on bird-ways in this suburb. 

It is needless to say that the English sparrows 
thrive here, making their usual tumult, and put- 
ting on their big, patronizing airs, as they do 
everywhere; yet they have not crowded out all 
our pleasant native birds. One may still sit in 

80 


LYRISTS OF A SUBURB. 81 


one’s back yard of an evening, and watch the 
chimney-swifts circling overhead, sometimes at so 
great a height that they seem like mere specks 
slipping across the sky. Now they glide with out- 
stretched wings, apparently without the movement 
of a feather or a muscle; and now they propel 
themselves forward with short, quick strokes. It 
is not difficult to tell the swifts from the swallows 
and house-martins when you see them on the 
wing, for the wing-strokes of the swifts are much 
shorter and more rapid than those of the other 
birds. 

The swallows, by the way, are genuine athletes 
in the air —regular acrobats. Though the move- 
ment of their wings is rather leisurely, their flight 
is exceedingly rapid; and it is thrilling to watch 
them, especially about a steep cliff, hurling them- 
selves down from some height with the most reck- 
less disregard of danger, as if they meant to dash 
out their brains on the rocks below; and then, 
just when you think the fatal moment has come, 
they describe a sharp but graceful curve, and glide 
away unhurt. Oh, how they wheel, and mount, 
and plunge, and circle, and poise, “ aslant with the 
hill and a-curve with the vale!” Several very 


interesting chapters on swifts and swallows may 


82, LYRISTS OF A SUBURB. 


be found in Charles C. Abbott’s well-known book, 
“A Naturalist’s Rambles about Home.” 

It was in February, during several days of mild 
weather, that I first heard the loud Peto, peto, peto / 
of the tufted titmouse or chickadee, repeated some- 
what rapidly, with the accent on the first syllable. 
Early in the spring these birds seem to seek 
human associations; for then they were to be 
seen and heard in the maples about the house, 
coming within a few feet of the door; but later 
they became more retiring in their habits, seeking 
homes in out-of-the-way places, where, in company 
with the nuthatches and black-capped chickadees, 
they reared their young and broke the silence of 
the solitudes. Yet when you go to their haunts, 
they do not seem to be shy. At least, one day as 
I sat reading in a green, shady hollow, a half- 
dozen of these birds flitted about in the bushes 
and trees only a few feet from me, ringing the 
changes on their monotonous Da, dd, da / and seem- 
ingly disposed to be very friendly. 

Do you know this little dandy in plumes? He 
wears a coat of a leaden gray color, and a whitish 
vest, while his sides are striped with rusty brown. 
But you will recognize him at once when you see 
the tuft on his crown, cocked up in a jaunty fashion, 


LYRISTS OF A SUBURB. 83 


and having a narrow frontlet of black. When 
once you have seen him there is no other bird for 
which you will mistake him. He is a real cox- 
comb, though a pleasant and agreeable one, differ- 
- ing in that respect from human dandies. Then he 
has quite a variety of notes and phrases in which 
to express his thoughts; but the most stirring of 
them is his clarion call in early spring ; for it seems 
as if he were trying to rouse the grass and flowers 
and insects from their winter slumbers; and he 
will succeed, too, by and by. 

There are several interesting migrants that may 
be studied in these suburbs. One bright, sunshiny 
day in April, as I sat writing in my study, my ear 
caught the clear, continuous, and rather pensive 
notes of a bird’ssong. In an instant I had sprung 
from my chair, seized my opera glass, and rushed 
out into the front yard. With pulses throbbing, I 
looked up into the maple-tree whence the song 
came, and saw a beautiful bird perched on a twig. 
It was a white-crowned sparrow. I could scarcely 
repress a cry of delight, for the moment a bird- 
lover discovers a new specimen, or hears a new 
song, he has a sensation of rare and exciting joy. 
The bird itself was not new to me; for I had seen it 
at least twice in Northern Indiana where I had 


84. LYRISTS OF A SUBURB. 


formerly lived, but had never before heard its song. 
The notes are very sweet, and have been translated 
by some one into the old song, “ O dear, dear, what 
can the matter be?” 

My bird warbled awhile in the tree, and then 
fluttered down upon the grass in front of me, so 
that I could distinctly note his snow-white crown, 
banded with black on the forehead and sides of the 
head. The arrangement on the nape is very 
beautiful; for there the white stripes of the crown 
and those on the sides of the head run together, 
and the back bands curve around and almost meet 
each other. The general color of the bird, aside 
from the parts described, is a fine dark ash, relieved 
by two white bars on the wings, and some other 
markings on the back and tail. 

Although this was the first time I had heard the 
minstrelsy of this bird, it was not the last. Experi- 
ences in bird study are very apt to be duplicated. 
If you see or hear a bird once, you are sure to 
see or hear him again in course of time; and not 
unfrequently does it occur that birds which are 
very rare before you make their acquaintance, 
apparently become quite abundant after that event. 
However, I do not think that the difference lies in 
the birds, but in the observer, whose interest has 


LYRISTS OF A SUBURB. 85 


been awakened and whose eye has become alert 
after a first meeting with a feathered friend. But 
this is a digression; I have merely interlarded 
these remarks for the encouragement of the tyro, 
and must now return to my subject, the white- 
crowned sparrows. 

In May of the next year a bevy of these sweet- 
voiced lyrists visited my suburb and remained fully 
two weeks, until I began to hope they would 
become permanent residents. In this I was dis- 
appointed, but while here they favored me with 
many a delightful chorus. After hearing them so 
frequently, [am prepared to add a few observations 
to those already made, on their minstrelsy. The 
opening notes are prolonged and very sweet, clear, 
bell-like and somewhat sad, and might be repre- 
sented thus: “ O-0-0-h, d-e-a-r, d-e-a-r,’ uttered 
with a peculiar swinging movement, hard to de- 
scribe. After the opening syllables the song 
becomes accelerated and might be called a trill, 
often gathering momentum toward the close and 
ending with an emphatic repetition of the last 
syllable, thus: ‘“ What-can-the-matter-be-be-be 2?” 
The lay is admirable in technique, and I hope 
some trained musician will sometime represent it 


on the musical scale. 


a: LYRISTS OF A SUBURB. 


A New England writer on birds requested me, - 
some time ago, to describe the song of the white- 
crowned sparrow for his benefit, as he had never 
heard it. He added, further, that some of the 
books declare it to be much like the song of the 
white-throated sparrow, so that the two can scarcely 
be distinguished. No careful student would ever 
confound the lyrical performances of the two birds. 
They are different in tone, expression, and arrange- 
ment of the syllables. The song of the white- 
throat is a quaver or tremolo from beginning to 
end, while the notes of the white-crown are through- 
out firm and clear. ‘The latter part of the white- 
throat’s lay is a sort of triple triad, which Dr. 
Wheaton represents thus : “ A-body, d-body, d-body.” 
There is nothing of the kind in the lay of the white- 
crown, whose closing trill is less striking and 
characteristic. 

If I were compelled to say which of these songsters 
should be awarded the palm, I should be somewhat 
nonplussed, but think I should render the verdict as 
follows: If the closing trill of the white-crown’s 
song were as melodious as the opening syllables, 
he would, I think, distance his rival; but since he 
does not end as well as he begins, the impression 
left by his carol is not quite so pleasing as that 


LYRISTS OF A SUBUBB. | 87 


made by the white-throat, and hence the latter 
should wear the laurels. 

I cannot forbear adding one simple incident 
while Iam speaking of the white-crowned sparrows. 
One day in May I was returning from the woods 
across a clover field, when a covey of eight or ten 
of these birds ran before me on the ground or 
scurried along the rail fence. Their immaculate 
white crowns gleamed like jewels as they caught 
the bright rays of the sun and flung them shimmer- 
ing tomy eye. A clump of downy headed dande- 
lion stalks came in the way of the flock of feath- 
ered pedestrians, and it was amusing to see the 
hungry birds seize them, bend down the flexile 
stems, scatter the down like snow-flakes upon the 
grass, and then hungrily devour the seeds. It was 
one of the daintiest phases of bird deportment I 
have ever witnessed —a picture that would have 
delighted an artist or a poet. 

I wish you could have seen and heard several 
lark finches (lark sparrows, Mr. Ridgway calls 
them) that were to be found for a week or two in 
the spring along the fences of a wheat-field beyond 
the commons. How curiously variegated their 
heads are with chestnut, black and white, giving 
them quite a striking and picturesque appearance ! 


88 LYRISTS OF A SUBURB. 


If the bird stands facing you, you. will notice a 
small black spot on the chest. In some places it 
is called the road-bird. Its song is exceedingly 
pleasing, now lifted high and clear, now falling 
as if the soloist were exhausted, and anon rising 
with renewed vigor. Heard once, it cannot be 
forgotten. 

In a paper published in one of our popular mag- 
azines, John Burroughs expresses some disappoint- 
ment with the minstrelsy of this finch, intimating 
that his vocal powers have been rated too high by 
writers on bird hfe in our Middle States. It is 
possible that he expected too much of the bird, but 
I am inclined to think that he did not hear it at 
its best. I have myself heard it sing in a low, 
squeaking voice that was not very pleasing, I admit, 
although it seemed to point in the direction of 
exquisite reserves of talent and vocal skill. But 
one evening as I was returning in the gloaming 
from a tramp through the woods, I heard this bird 
singing a superlatively rich roundelay. At first it 
rose on the air from a stump in the corn-field, 
causing me to pause in rapture, and then the blithe 
musician flew to the rail fence of the lane which I 
was pursuing, alighting not more than two rods 


away, and again broke into song. 


LYRISTS OF A SUBURB. © 89 


It was a sweet, continuous warble, and not inter- 
mittent like the trills of most of the sparrows ; the 
voice was full, clear and flexible; the notes varied, 
several strains being much like certain runs of the 
brown thrasher’s song, but of decidedly finer 
quality ; while the whole carol was admirable in 
execution and theme-like in character. The musi- 
cian’s voice was equally clear and mellifluent 
whether he struck notes high or low in the scale, 
Moreover, he seemed to sing in a sort of ecstasy. 
To this day —many months later — those. melli- 
fluous strains ring in my ear, bringing that twilight 
scene vividly to mind. 

It is surprising how many birds may be seen 
here, each of which deserves a chapter, though 
most of them can be given only a casual mention. 
Here the little goldfinch may be heard in the 
maples before the house, vying with the canaries 
in their cages, and then darting away in his grace- 
ful, undulatory flight, twittering at every forward 
plunge, “J can beat you singing; I can beat you 
singing.’ That tricksy spirit, the blue jay, calls in 
the trees; the crow blackbird utter his harsh 
“ Ohack, chack !” as he flies overhead ; the Baltimore 
oriole, though rarer than one likes, flutes occasion- 


ally in the grove; the robin carols on the house- 


90 LYRISTS OF A SUBURB. 


top when “the dappled dawn doth rise,” long 
before his human rivals think, or even dream, of 
stirring from their morning slumbers ; all day long 
one hears the loud, defiant rhapsody of the indigo 
bird. The stentorian call of the yellow-winged 
woodpecker, or flicker, echoes over the fields; or 
one sees him beating across the commons to a dead 
tree at the edge of the woodland, where he is train- 
ing a brood of young “high-holders” in the way 
that they should go —or rather, fly. The ubiqui- 
tous red-headed woodpecker thrums on a tree, or 
plays a tune on the ridge of a slate roof. A few 
catbirds are mysteriously silent, and the brown 
thrush does not feel at liberty to do his best. For 
a couple of months in the spring the meadow larks 
give concerts on the commons and in the more dis- 
tant clover field ; and then, after a month or more 
of silence, may again be heard fluting cheerfully 
late’ in September. Bluebirds complain, chipping 
sparrows and field sparrows trill, song sparrows 
and grass-finches chant, golden-crowned kinglets 
Tsip ! and a killdeer plover screams beside a pond 
near by. 

Beyond the commons before referred to, there is 
a large field in which clover, timothy and “ white- 


top” attain a rank growth during the summer, and 


LYRISTS OF A SUBURB. 91 


along the fences of which golden-rod and harebells 
bloom. This field, commonplace as it may seem, 
contains many specimens of interest to the lover of 
birds, several of which deserve more than a mere 
passing notice. You would be amused with 
that delightfully disagreeable musician, the black- 
throated bunting, which may be easily recognized 
by his yellow breast and the large black patch on 
his throat, and especially by his harsh, clanging 
notes. By the way, this bird is called “ Dickcissel”’ 
in Ridgway’s “ Manual.” The word has no special 
meaning, and gives but a faint idea of the song of 
the bird, and yet there is a dashabout it thatseems 
to fit this quaint, nervous vocalist to perfection ; 
and the man who first suggested it ought to be 
awarded a silver medal. Dickcissel is a persistent 
singer, having an overplus of Yankee stick-to-itive- 
ness. “ Chick, chick, che-che-che !” he rasps over and 
‘ over again, with now and then a little variation, 
until you think his throat must be torn to shreds. 
Now he perches on a low tree, now on a fence 
stake, and now on the top of a weed. If an 
Opinion were worth anything, I should say that he 
carries a small iron chain in his windpipe, and 
rings it so constantly for the sake of the tickling 
sensation. So anxious is he to maintain his repu- 


92 ~ LYRISTS OF A SUBURB. 


tation as a songster that he often repeats his notes 
on the wing, unable to wait until he reaches a 
perch. Why, I even heard that song coming 
across the commons at ten o’clock one moonlight 
night. 

Going out to the clover-fields in June, I give my 
ears to the birds, and watch them as they perform 
their feats of scaling in theair. Among the many 
notes I detect a fine trill running like a golden 
thread through the weft of the other music; and 
although the little flutist is nowhere to be seen, I 
know from previous acquaintance that he is the 
yellow-winged or grasshopper sparrow, one of the 
smallest of the numerous family to which he be- 
longs. He is so shy in the breeding season that it 
is almost impossible to get near enough to identify 
him even with an opera-glass, and I have often 
lost my patience in hunting for him. Sometimes 
he sits on a weed so far away that you can just 
discern a dark, tiny bird-form ; yet you may know 
it is he by his sharp, fine 7'séééé / occasionally pro- 
longed into a ditty of considerable beauty. Later 
in the season, however, you may get near enough 
to see his black crown, with its yellowish median 
line; and perhaps you may make out to discover 
the yellow edgings of his wings. 


LYRISTS OF A SUBURB. 93 


One of my most delightful companions of this 
elover-field has been the bobolink, which at his 
first coming and for two months afterward made 
the welkin ring with its rich, metallic melody. 
Nothing can be more delightful than to listen to 
the male bobolinks, which are the musicians, as 
they mount up into the air, poise for a few mo- 
ments without change of position, burst into song, 
and then sweep slowly and sometimes in a spiral 
course down into the grass again, the notes melt- 
ing away in a cadence as the birds reach the 
ground. When a half-dozen of these birds are 
singing their overtures simultaneously in different 
parts of the field, the air seems to quiver and 
dance and gambol with the vibrant melody. 

Once more I yield to the temptation to quote 
from Mr. Lowell, whose ** Under the Willows” is 
so buoyant with the joyfulness of nature, especially 
of nature in June. After speaking of the early 
spring song of the bluebird, he breaks out in this, 
manner: 

‘¢But now, O rapture! sunshine winged and voiced, 

Bsinext of iii, netia aineee: all in ae 
The bobolink has come, and, like the soul 
Of the sweet season vocal in a bird, 


Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what, 
Save June! Dear June! Now God be praised for June.” 


94 LYRISTS OF A SUBURB. 


Dear Poet! (pardon the apostrophe) if there is 
anything “ so rare asa day in June,” it is the 
melody of the bobolink in that pearl month of the 
year which, 


‘¢From some southern ambush in the sky, 
With one great gush of blossoms storms the world.” 


A SWEET-VOICED WREN. 


ALMOST everybody recognizes a wren at sight, 
on account of certain family traits that cannot be 
mistaken and that distinguish him from all other 
birds. A part, if not all, of the plumage of the 
wrens is more or less thickly barred; they have a 
quaint habit of flirting their tails when you ap- 
proach them, and there is something peculiar about 
their trim figures, in spite of minor differences 
among the various species, that at once betrays 
their identity. But few persons are aware that 
there are so many different kinds of wrens. The 
wren family on this continent alone comprises six 
genera and thirty-three species. Comparatively 
few of them, however, are to be found in a single 
locality. 

You will find a great deal said in popular works 
on ornithology about the Carolina wren, the house 
wren, and the winter wren; but the little feath- 
ered companion of which I am about to tell you 


is seldom mentioned. He is called Bewick’s wren, 
95 


96 A SWEET-VOICED WREN. 


or the long-tailed house wren, and I find him one 
of the most delightful tenants of the suburbs in 
which I live, his quaint, agreeable manners and 
liquid notes having greatly endeared him to me. 

Those charming writers on birds, Charles C. 
Abbott, John Burroughs and Bradford Torrey do 
not so much as refer to him, as far as I have read 
their works, while Mr. Ridgway says that he is 
rare and local east of the Alleghanies and north of 
forty degrees north latitude. But here in Central 
Ohio he flourishes, being almost as much a part of 
many a homestead as the domestic fowls them- 
selves. No other species, except the Carolina 
wren, is so abundant here, while the house wren is 
never seen ;* the winter wren is only a migrant, and 
Parkman’s wren seldom makes himself visible or 
audible. 

I wish every lover of the feathered kingdom 
could hear the song of this little wren; it is such 
a glad, sweet melody. —one might almost say, “a 
vocal caress.” One day in early spring, as I stepped 
out into my back lot, a wavering trill drifted to 
me across the commons from the fence of the 


*Since this was in type I have found a house wren in an old orchard 
about a mile and a half from my home. He was, however, like the winter 
wren, only a migrant. 


A SWEET—-VOICED WREN. 97 


clover-field beyond, causing me to spring up alert 
and listen for a repetition of the melodious strain. 
What could it be? At first I thought it must be a 
variation of the song-sparrow’s canticle, new to me, 
but it struck me that the tones were not. so full 
and resonant, and that there was more inflection 
and blending of the notes. Rushing into the 
house for my opera glass, I hurried across the 
ereensward. The nearer I approached him the 
more was I convinced that the minstrel had qual- 
. Ities of voice not possessed by the song-sparrow ; 
it was a voice of different timbre. The song was 
new to me; for I had been living here only a few 
months at the time. 

Presently I espied the blithe little vocalist on a 
fence stake. There he stood with his tail bent 
downward in true wren fashion, puffing out his 
throat as he poured forth his delicious roundel, until 
I got too close to suit his fancy, when up went 
his tail, which he switched from side to side in a 
sort of curve, instead of backward and forward as 
some other wrens do, and then he seudded down 
among the rails. Here he crept in and out among 
the crevices, now coming forth a moment to take a 


peep at me, and then darting back again into a 
hiding-place. I have learned to know him by the 


98 A SWEET-VOICED WREN. 


queer sidewise flourish of his tail, which is quite 
long for so small a bird, and apparently a little 
unwieldy. 

But his song! It is exquisite. He seems to 
say : “ Sw-e-e-t, sw-e-e-t, very, v-e-e-r-y sw-e-e-t ! > You 
must remember, however, that no twosyllables are 
uttered in the same way; each consists of several 
different notes on the musical staff, run together 
with a sweet, melodious slur. ‘The opening notes 
are clear and dulcet, delivered with a kind of 
swinging movement difficult to describe, while in . 
the middle and toward the close of the song there 
are several strains that grow more enchanting the 
oftener you hear them. Withal, it is a joyful little 
lay ; the bird is evidently no pessimist. 

There may be other wrens whose voices have 
more volume, but I doubt whether there is one in 
whose song you will hear more real melody. The 
vocal performances of the Carolina wren, varied as 
they are, seem quite harshin comparison. Bewick’s 
wren is also an early riser. Sometimes in the 
half-wakeful, half-dreamful hours of the morning 
his matin song floats into my window, running 
like a thread of gold through the chirping of the 
sparrows, the sighing of the bluebirds, and the 


earols of the robins. 


A SWEET-VOICED WREN. 99 


More than once has he led me a chase among 
the houses of my neighbors, flitting from tree to 
tree, or from post to post, until I was ashamed to 
continue my pursuit further lest my sanity should 
be called in question. First, he would sing his 
ditty in a maple near my residence; but if I 
approached, he would dart in a zigzag course across 
the street, and when I hurried after, he was gone 
again, and then I would hear him warbling beyond 
a cluster of houses: “ A-e-e-r-r-e [ am! H-e-e-r-e, 
h-e-e-r-e, sir!” The blithe little tantalizer! Out 
of pure admiration of his cunning ways, I have 
often felt that I ought to catch him and give hin 
a vigorous love-tap. 

In the lyrical season he sang a great deal, and I 
never tired of his roundels; but, what is more, he 
did not desert me in midsummer when so many 
birds are silent. Quite frequently he would break 
into song on the sultriest days, and in my judg- 
ment his lay was as bright and gleeful as ever. 
My notes, taken last year, say that on the eleventh 
of September my little friend gave me a pleasant 
reminder of the fair springtime when he was so 
lavish of his melody. 

It is surprising that a bird so shy should choose 
a nesting place so near the dwellings of man. Still, 


100 A SWEET—-VOICED WREN. 


that is precisely what he does. I have not found 
his nest in these suburbs, for one does not like to go 
prowling too much about one’s neighbors’ dwellings, 
but there was, during the last summer, a wren nur- 
sery somewhere in the neighborhood, perhaps in a 
box, or a hollow stump, or a fence post; for I fre- 
quently heard the alarm call of the parent birds 
across the way, which meant that some one had 
come too near their homestead for their comfort. 
Close to a house on the borders of a woodland 
that I often haunt, I found another pair of these 
birds, but was here also unable to discover their 
nest. However, in one of my strolls I formed the 
acquaintance of the young birds, in company with 
their elders, after they had left the nursery. None 
of them seemed to be very shy that day, but flitted 
about in a brush-heap, looking up at me as if I 
were an object of curiosity, not in the least 
dangerous. The bantlings looked so handsome in 
their new, barred suits, which were of a slightly 
duller cast than those of the old birds, that I could 
not help calling them “little darlings” to their 
faces! I noticed that even the juvenile birds had 
already fallen into the habit of brandishing their 
long, unwieldy tails, just as their ancestors have 


been doing for I know not how long before them. 


TANGLES OF BIRD-SONG. 


Go out to the haunts of the birds on a bright 
morning of May or June, and listen; you will be 
surprised at the number and variety of the strains 
that fall simultaneously on your ear, and I doubt 
whether you will be able to resist the wondrous 
enchantment of the birds’ choral. If the ear is 
not trained, it will catch only a jumble of musical 
notes, without rhythm, or unity, or system, nor 
will the hearer be able to differentiate (to use a 
scientific term now in vogue) the various trills 
and quavers and carols that greet him; but the 
trained ear detects every thread woven into the 
fabric of melody, tracing it to the particular bird- 
throat from which it unwinds, and catching not 
only the major but also the minor strains; the 
gossamer trill of the grasshopper sparrow as well 
as the ecstatic outburst of the bobolink; the sad 
tune of the wood sparrow and the glad medley of 
brown thrush. 


It is indeed a rare treat to listen to the early 
101 


102 TANGLES OF BIRD-SONG. 


bird orchestra, and try to catch the higher har- 
mony of it all. Many times have I been caught — 
a willing captive—in the meshes of an outdoor 
concert. 

Memory fondly lingers about a delightful ex- 
perience of this kind which I had one June morn- 
ing in Northern Indiana. Before daylight I had 
risen, and leaving behind me the city wrapped in 
slumber, I made my way across the dewy fields to 
the broad, clear river, whose wooded banks a large 
number of birds had chosen for their summer 
home. 

My objective point was a well-timbered spot 
between the river bank and a steep declivity 
about eight rods back from the stream. Here and 
there were dense thickets of underbrush, growing 
up about the bases of the beeches, maples, elms 
and sycamores, while the more open spaces were 
covered with a carpet of soft, green sod. The 
steep acclivity, which was thickly overgrown with 
small oak-trees, curved around to meet the river 
above and below, thus inclosing a regular bird 
bower, as I well knew from many previous 
excursions. 

When I reached the place, the sun was just 
peeping over the eastern woods, glittering in the 


TANGLES OF BIRD-—SONG. 103 


dewdrops, and gilding earth and sky with glory. 
In the words of Bryant, it was a day — 


‘¢In flowery June, 
When brooks send up a cheerful tune, 
And groves a joyful sound.” 


No sooner had the sun risen than the birds be- 
gan their matin concert. Some of my readers 
my be disposed to doubt the fidelity of my descrip- 
tion; but I assure them that I am rather under- 
stating than overstating the facts.. With pencil in 
hand, I lent my ear to the woodland orchestra, 
trying to get a clear impression of each lyrist’s 
peculiar strain, and roughly jotting it down in my 
notebook. To a bird lover it was Paradise. 

Let me call the bead-roll of that winged choir. 
In the top of a tall elm the brown thrush led the 
chorus with his varied, well-accentuated mimicry ; 
below, in the bushes, a cat-bird vied with the 
superior vocalist in the tree-top, falling very little 
behind ; a song sparrow trilled his soft love-notes 
in the willows, while another minstrel of the same 
species disported himself on a tall bush, and sang 
a, pean worthy of his royal vocal powers; two 
male indigo birds chased each other pell-mell, in 
and out, hither and yon, among the thick branches 


104 TANGLES OF BIRD-SONG. 


and foliage, until I feared they would dash 
themselves to pieces, and then, alighting on sepa- 
rate perches not far apart, they hurled their de- 
fiance at each other in loud and not unmusical 
bursts of song; a red-start flashed his coat of black 
and gold in the trees, breaking out at intervals in 
a lively trill; not far away a summer warbler 
added his quota to the general chorus; several 
vireos performed in recitative among the branches 
of a willow; the sad minor of a black-capped 
chickadee lent sweetness to the symphony; the 


fluting of a Baltimore oriole could be heard, im- | 


parting a cheeriness and a feeling of good-fellow- 
ship ; a sandpiper “ teetered ” and complained; a 
killdeer plover flew across the river, uttering his 
shrill cry; while last, though not least, a robin, 
from a tree-top on the high acclivity, rang out his 
allegro, “Cheerily, cheer up! cheerup!” until it 
woke the sylvan echoes. 

It was a tumult (I had almost said a chaos) of 
bird music, only it seemed to me that a law of har- 
mony ran through it all, which a musician might 
have caught and represented by some system of 
notation. Surely, so I thought, it was a fabric 
woven according to some well-ordered plan. 

Another such morning comes back to my mind, 


TANGLES OF BIRD-SONG. 105 


although the music was somewhat different in 
character. I think that was also in June. At an 
early hour I was wending my way along the wind- 
ing banks of a creek, when, just beyond a railroad 
bridge, in a loop of the stream, I found a low, wet, 
boggy stretch, overgrown with weeds, willows and 
other bushes, while farther back on the slope 
‘there was a grove of small oak-trees. This place 
turned out to be a sparrows’ elysium, and these 
birds were having their jubilee when I arrived on 
the scene. They were, of course, the song spar- 
rows, those indomitable minstrels. Almost every 
voice in that choral was a sparrow voice, but the 
music was scarcely less enchanting than that of 
the concert previously described, and I am sure 
it was almost as full-toned, though not as varied. 
On every bush, on every weed-stalk, and even on 
the tufts of sod raised by the winter’s frosts, these 
birds seemed to find a perch from which to sing their 
roundels, making the air fairly dance with musical 
transport, and bringing from mea shout of delight 
that would not be hushed. Could I have recalled 
the lines I might have exclaimed with Pope: 


‘¢ Hear how the birds, on every blooming spray, 
With joyous music wake the dawning day.” 


106 TANGLES OF BIRD-—SONG. 


It must not be thought that this concert lacked 
variety. Some of the songs were loud and joyous, 
others soft and plaintive. One minstrel sang a 
song of triumph, another a love song, another a 
dirge, and still another a lullaby. Besides, there 
was every variety of inflection, of trill and quaver, 
of clear note and broken spray, of sharp staccato 
and blended legato. Only two other birds took part 
in the concert; the black-throated bunting, which 
rang in his harsh notes like a trombone accompani- 
ment, and the warbling vireo, whose almost human 
tones ran sweetly through it all. A morning like 
this opens a man’s senses to the beauties of nature, 
and makes him a better man ever after. 

No songster with which I am acquainted has a 
larger répertoire of notes than the brown thrush. 
While he seems to sing with diffidence on the out- 
skirts of the city, though he may rear a brood in 
the hawthorns near by, yet in his more sequestered 
haunts he is lavish of his music, making the wood- 
lands echo from morning till night. One May day 
I took a long ramble along the cliffy banks of a 
river in Central Ohio, and at last reached a grassy 
slope, where hawthorns grew here and there in 
clumps. The broad stretch of lowland below was 
green with fresh grass and sparsely timbered with 


TANGLES OF BIRD-SONG. 107 


large trees. What a tangle of music! Brown 
thrushes to right of me, brown thrushes to left of 
me, brown thrushes in front of me, volleyed and 
thundered —in a lyrical way, of course. The 
“throstle’s wild, summer-swung tune” it was. 
There must have been ten or a dozen performers in 
that thrush oratorio. They seemed to be in a per- 
fect frenzy, trilling and quavering, and making 
all kinds of vocal display. I do not believe they 
mimicked, but performed their own compositions. 

It was a good opportunity to study the different 
qualities of thrush voice. ‘There was one songster 
especially, perched on a thorn-tree beyond a little 
hollow, whose tones were of excellent tembre ; loud, 
flexible, sweet and liquid, ringing above the 
general symphony. While all the birds seemed to 
bein good tune, many grades of excellence could be 
discerned. Like asweet, far-away accompaniment, 
the song of a thrush was wafted to me from a 
thicket beyond the brow of the hill. Several 
cardinal grossbeaks whistled on their flutes, a lark 
finch or two sung cheerily, while, interlaced in the 
general network of song, I could hear the swing- 
ing whit-ti-te, whit-ti-te, whit-ti-te of the Maryland 
yellow-throat coming up from the copse at the 
edge of a marsh. 


108 TANGLES OF BIRD-SONG. 


But why did not the rose-breasted grossbeak in 
the hickory-tree join in the chorus? Why did he 
maintain such a sullen silence, when we know that 
he has very superior vocal talents? Was it be- 
cause he was too proud, and regarded the whole 
performance as a crude hubbub of sound, in which 
it would have been absurd for him to take part? 
He certainly put on a very wise and patronizing 
air throughout it all. 

By reference to my note-book I find that I was 
caught in another mesh of bird song and bird 
prattle on the thirteenth of April, 1890, while . 
sitting beneath the trees at the border of the woods 
of which I have so often spoken. 

“ Listen to the woodland chorus,” my notes run; 
“the turtle doves are cooing their soft, far-away 
lays; the blue jays are trilling in their explosive 
way or calling plaintively ; the robins — how many 
I cannot tell—are carolling in a transport; the 
tufted titmice are sounding their bugles; the 
measured roundelays of the wood sparrows fall 
sweetly on the ear; the stentorian reveille of the 
golden-winged woodpeckers is heard, mingling with 
their affectionate chattering in the trees ; a chewink 
sings in a brush-heap; the sweet quaver of the 
white-throated sparrows runs likea thread of silver 


TANGLES OF BIRD-SONG. 109 


through the weft of song; Carolina wrens are 
having a vocal revel; cardinal grossbeaks and 
meadow-larks are fluting; the nuthatches furnish 
the alto for the anthem; a song sparrow plays 
several variations on his harp, and a brown thrush 
breaks forth in so rich a strain that he must be 
awarded the palm in the winged orchestra.” 


SONGS OUT OF SEASON. 


Mucu has been written concerning the minstrelsy 
of our American birds during the song season, 
which includes the three spring months and a part 
of July. It is not so well known, however, that 
many birds fall into the lyrical mood at other 
seasons of the year. I have been giving the sub- 
ject of “songs out of season” much attention, and 
wish to present to my readers the results of my 
study. Let us begin with the robin, whose carols 
are familiar sounds in the spring. It is not, how- 
Over, an uncommon occurrence to hear him singing 
a soft, far-away roundel in August, as I did on the 
thirty-first of that month, when almost all other birds 
were silent. Of course it lacks the vigor of his 
early spring peeans, being only a sort of fractional 
aftermath of song. In September and October I 
frequently heard the redbreast carolling to keep 
himself in tune for the next spring, and my notes 
inform me that on the third of November —a clear, 
cold day —a robin was singing a sprightly lay 
before the sun had risen. 

110 


SONGS OUT OF SEASON. ui 


These birds are such irrepressible singers that I 
expected to be able to record a carol for every 
month in the year, but was disappointed in this 
hope, for not a robin was to be seen after the middle 
of November, until some time in January; and 
even when they reappeared there seemed to be no 
music in their throats, at other times so tuneful. 

On October 29 I had a surprise which I believe 
deserves a somewhat minute description. For 
several weeks I had been watching the fox sparrows 
along the bushy fringe of the woods and in a 
marsh not far off; but as they are only migrants 
I had little hope of hearing their song, at least in 
the autumn. On the day referred to, while 
sauntering along the border of the woods, I flushed 
one of these birds in the briers. It darted in its 
graceful, thrush-like flight back of me to a sapling, 
choosing a perch where I could not see it on 
account of the intervening bushes. I had resumed 
my walk, for the fox sparrow was a bird well- 
known to me, when I was suddenly brought to a 
halt by a new style of bird melody. What could 
it be? I was instantly on the alert, and started 
back to investigate. The notes came from the pre- 
cise spot whither the fox sparrow had flown a few 
moments before. 


12 SONGS OUT OF SEASON. 


As I approached the music ceased, and presently 
the fox sparrow flew from the sapling and dis- 
appeared in the brier thicket to my left. As there 
were other birds flitting about, I could not be sure 
which songster was the author of this strange 
lyrical performance. Presently he alighted on a 
blackberry stalk in full view, his reddish-striped 
breast showing plainly, and while I leveled my glass 
upon him he burst into song, producing the iden- 
tical notes that had startled me so agreeably a few 
minutes before. There could be no mistake, for I 
plainly saw the movement of his mandibles and the 
heaving of his bosom as he enunciated the notes. 
It was a real discovery for a bird lover. 

Whether the song was similar to the one he 
sings at his summer home in Labrador, British 
America and Alaska I am unable to say, and I 
therefore reproduce the notes phonetically as accu- 
rately as I can, so that readers who live in those 
northern lands may have an opportunity of making 
comparison : Hd-deert-dé-dé-déé-d-ha-ah! ‘Thesyl- 
lables were rather distinct, several of them staccato, 
and the whole song enunciated in a kind of recita- 
tive. While the lyrical effort was pleasing and 
novel, it could not have been called “ exquisitely 
sweet,” as this bird’s summer song is said to be. 


SONGS OUT OF SEASON. 113 


The next autumn I heard one of these birds 
deliver his recitative in a chestnut grove in North- 
eastern Ohio. In the spring of 1890 the woods 
were vocal with their songs, albeit a writer on the 
birds of this State asserts that they do not sing on 
their migratory tour to their Northern homes. In 
another paper I have endeavored to characterize 
their spring melody. 

A frequent and cheering sound in the woods 
during January and February was the resonant 
whistle of the cardinal grossbeak. This was all the 
more remarkable when collated with the fact tha 
his song was not heard once during the succeedin,, 
winter. True, he and his mate were absent from 
November to February, but even when they 
returned, all their music seemed to be locked up in 
their throats. | 

The conduct of the meadow-larks was somewhat 
quaint. Early in the spring, while the weather 
was still chill and frosty, they gave free concerts 
on the commons back of the house and in the 
adjoining clover field, continuing them through 
May and June and a part of July. Then they 
were silent for a while, probably through the 
moulting season; but in September they resumed 
their fluting with more vigor than before, keeping 


114 SONGS OUT OF SEASON. 


up such an incessant pot-pourrt of shrill sounds 
that one’s ears fairly tingled. Sometimes three or 
four of them would cluster together and engage in 
a musical tournament, making the welkin ring. 
These performances continued until the latter part 
of October or first of November, when they 
suddenly ceased and the birds disappeared. 

It is not an uncommon occurrence to hear the 
loud Bish-yer, bish-yer ! of the great Carolina wren 
in November and December, although the spring is 
his favorite season of song. The month of Decem- 
ber was exceptionally warm even for this latitude, 
a fact that was favorable to my investigations, and 
I was surprised and delighted at the number of 
songs I heard. On the eleventh of the month —a 
clear, bright day —as I stood at the border of the 
woods the sweet, sad minor whistle of the black- 
capped chickadee fell on my ear, sounding from the 
sylvan depths like the lament of some love-lorn 
sprite whose heart had been broken by the defec- 
tion of a fickle suitor. Again on the nineteenth 
those pensive notes were heard: Wh-e-e-e, wh-e-e- 
phit ; wh-e-e-e, wh-e-e-phit / so sad and far-away that 
the tears almost started to my eyes. 

The bugle call of the tufted titmouse in early 


spring is one of the most stirring sounds of the ~ 


SONGS OUT OF SEASON. 115 


season and passes for the song of that bird, and 
there is a certain clarion-like music about it. 
Aithough it is seldom repeated, except in the 
spring, I have heard it more than once in Novem- 
ber, December and January, piped in soft, almost 
dulcet tones. 

Have other students of the bird kingdom heard 
the song of the white-throated sparrow in the 
auturan? Itisa rare sound, yet I heard it one 
day in October while strolling through the woods. 
This matchless songster seems to carry an AXolian 
harp in his throat. Like a wavering line of light 
it comes up from the tanglewood. The movement 
is deliberate at first, then becomes more and more 
accelerated, and dies away in a cadence exquisitely 
sweet. 

However, no bird has afforded me so much 
delight in this special line of investigation as the 
song sparrow ; not because he sings more sweetly 
than many other minstrels, but because of his in- 
defatigable industry. I have heard him singing 
with great vigor as early as February, during a 
few days of warm weather, and of course every one 
who pays the slightest attention to birds has been 
delighted with his madrigals and lullabies in March, 
April, June and July. Yet he does not then lay 


116 SONGS OUT OF SEASON. 


aside his harp. All through the month of August 
he plays upon it con spirito. When September 
comes he still sings, though his notes lack their 
previous vigor. On October 10 he had changed 
his tune from the lively trill of spring and mid- 
summer to a low, twittering warble. In November 
I was frequently greeted with that warble as I 
strolled along the margin of a pool on the com- 
mons. On December 9 one of these birds trilled in 
a clear, resonant tone. On the 13th it was the low, 
sweet warble again. On the 19th he regaled me 
again with his lively minstrelsy. 

Have you ever heard this indomitable musician 
singing a Christmas carol? I have the pleasure of 
recording such a piece of good fortune. Christmas 
morning was rather cold, but the sky was cloudless, 
and as I strolled out to the pond my ears caught the 
jubilant “ Glory to God in the highest” of my 
favorite lyrist—a fact of which I feel a little 
proud, and I think justly. , 

Two weeks of January had passed and the 
weather was growing colder, and yet I had not 
heard the song of my sparrow, though a friend told 
me he had heard a bird singing on the morning of 
the fifth. That did not satisfy me; I wanted to 


hear it myself. At last, on the sixteenth, as I was 


SONGS OUT OF SEASON. ETT 


crossing the bridge that spans the creek on the 
other side of the town —presto! I was almost 
lifted from my feet by the loud, clear ring of my 
songster’s trill coming up from the bushes that 
fringed the cliff. Feathery flakes of snow were 
flying in the cold, gusty wind, though at intervals 
the sun broke through a rift in the clouds. It was 
thrilling to an ornithologist to hear a bird song on 
a raw, midwinter day like that. Thus the song 
sparrow clasped the circlet of the months with his 
silvery trills. 

[Notr. — This paper was published in the February number of Outing, 
1891, and presents some of the results of my studies during the year 1889-90. 
A few of my conclusions have been slightly modified by subsequent re- 
searches, and during the last season, 1890-91, I have discovered many more 
interesting facts about bird-life in winter, many of which have been de- 
scribed in other chapters. My study of the minstrelsy of that peerless triller, 


the song sparrow, has been especially satisfactory to myself since ‘* Songs 
out of Season’’ was written. | 


A TINY: Vite 


WHAT need is there to people the woods with 
fairies, nymphs, dryads, and other fanciful beings, 
when we may find so many real creatures that are 
quite as interesting and beautiful? Even at the 
risk of making this monograph “ top-heavy,” as 
my boys would say, and thus marring its symme- 
try, I cannot refrain from quoting a passage from 
Sidney Lanier, whose sentiment I am half-inclined 


to endorse: 


‘¢ Much time is run, and man hath changed his ways, 
Since Nature, in the antique fable-days, 

Was hid from man’s true love by proxy fays, 

False fauns and rascal gods that stole her praise. 

The nymphs, cold creatures of man’s colder brain, 
Chilled Nature’s streams till man’s warm heart was fain 
Never to lave its love in them again.” 


Fairy stories have their use. All of us like to 
read them when they are well conceived and well 
told ; but they should never lead us for a moment 


to think that our woodlands are so sparsely in- 
118 


A TINY TILTER. 119 


habited that we must employ the imagination to 
make them inviting. Just look at the army of 
warblers and kinglets, real jewels in feathers, 
bright-hued blossoms of the bird world, more beau- 
tiful than anything the fancy could conjure up, be 
it never so inventive. It is not of the warblers 
and kinglets, however, that I wish to tell you, but 
of another little bird —a genuine Tom Thumb in 
plumes—the blue-gray gnat-catcher. He is a 
trifle larger than the ruby-throated humming-bird, 
and has a lithe, slender body, a long tail for so 
small a bird, and a slim bill somewhat curved 
toward the tip. Thus, you see,-he is built after 
the right pattern for playing pranks among the 
branches of the trees and catching gnats and flies 
on the wing. 

But let me describe his markings, so that you 
may be able to identify him the next time you 
take a stroll to the woods, if you happen to meet 
him. Unlike the kinglets, which belong to the 
same family, he has no flashy colors in his toilet, 
for he does not believe in wearing jewelry. A 
clear grayish blue colors the upper parts, becoming 
deeper blue on the top of the head and paler on 
the rump. If you look at him sharply, you will 
see a narrow black band extending across his fore- 


120 A TINY TILLTER. 


head and back over the eyes, like the frontlet of a 
boy’s cap. <A ring runs around the eye; his lower 
parts are whitish; the outer tail-feathers are white, 
while the central ones are black. | 
Having introduced you to this Liliputian in © 
feathers, I am ready to tell you something about 
his habits. Never shall I forget the bright June 
day on which I formed his acquaintance. I was 
sauntering through a pleasant woodland that 
sloped up from the banks of a broad river, study- 
ing the birds, as usual, when I heard a little lisping 
mew above me in the oak saplings. On looking 
up, I espied two small birds flitting about uneas- 
ily, and I knew at once that I had at last found 
the blue-gray gnat-catcher, for which I had been 
on the lookout for so long a time, having often 
read the descriptions of him in my bird manuals. 
But what was the cause of the pair’s agitation ? 
I peered up into the trees a while, watching their 
movements with intense interest, when lo! one of 
them flitted into the cup of what looked like a 
moss-covered knot in the fork of a branch and the 
main stem of a sapling. There the bird sat as 
cosy as you please, turning her head now and then 
to glance down at me. Suddenly it dawned upon 
my mind that I had not only discovered a bird that 


A TINY TILTER. 1k 


was new to me, but also his homestead. The nest 
was about twenty feet from the ground, and bore 
so close a resemblance to the bark of the tree, that 
I never should have found it, had not the artless 
tell-tales themselves betrayed their secret. 

A bird lover cannot rest content until he has 
seen the inside of a nest, and so I resolved to climb 
that sapling, although it was quite slender and 
free of branches for at least fifteen feet from the 
sround. It was hard work, and the feat was not 
very gracefully performed, I suppose ; but I could 
not stop for looks, and so at length I scrambled up 
to the nest. Oh, how the birds tsipped, and cried, 
and scolded, and dashed at me, coming within a 
few feet of my head, so that I could feel the wind 
of their fluttering wings! No doubt they thought 
a huge bugaboo was about to play havoc with 
their cottage in the tree. 

It was a dainty structure, neatly and compactly 
built of downy material, fine, wiry grass and horse 
hair, the cup being quite deep and lined with 
feathers, and the walls high, ornamented with 
lichens, contracted and deftly turned at the rim. 
I forget how many eggs it contained; three, I 
think, and they looked like gems studding the bot- 
tom of the nest. Their ground-color was a delicate 


122 A TINY TILTER. 


bluish-white tint, speckled with chestnut. Did I 
do wrong in yielding to the temptation to take 
one of them between my finger and thumb, just to 
see how pretty it was and how smooth it felt? I 
think no harm was done, for no sooner had I 
reached the ground than the female was again on 
the nest. 

These birds are a charming sight as they trip, 
fairylike, from twig to twig, pose in various atti- 
tudes, dart out into the air with expanded tail, 
seize a winged insect, clicking their mandibles 
viciously, and then flit gracefully back to a spray. 
I have often seen them hanging to the under side 
of a leaf, hunting for tidbits, so light and airy are 
they. Every movement is the poetry of grace. 
They are, with scarcely an exception, the most 
dexterous tilters of the woods. Sometimes when. 
the insect they are pursuing is very agile, they 
have quite a wing-contest before it is secured, but 
they seldom fail to bear the trophy away in 
triumph. 

Their little lisp has been called “a miniature 
imitation of the catbird’s well-known note.” Early 
in the spring, before most other migrants have 
arrived from the South, I have found these hardy 


creatures in the trees that skirt the river, singing 


A TINY TILTER. 123 


their sweet, prolonged little warble, which might 
almost be called a gossamer ditty. 

Think what a long voyage they have to make 
through the air over land and sea from their winter 
homes in Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba and the Bahama 
Islands ! 


A JOLLY RED-HEAD. 


ONE of the most interesting birds of my ac- 
quaintance is the red-headed woodpecker. In 
Ohio he is the most abundant species of the wood- 
pecker family, the flicker coming next in point of 
numbers. You may see him almost everywhere ; 
in the city as well as in the country; in the low- 
lands and meadows, if there are a few trees, as 
well as in the uplands; in the open spaces and in 
the dense woods, and wherever found, he is the 
same jolly, companionable fellow. I suppose every 
boy knows this bird, which, as Mr. Burroughs 
prettily says, “festoons the woods” with red, 
white and blue-black. He may be readily identi- 
fied by his crimson head and neck, making him 

ook as if he had plunged up to his shoulders into 
a keg of red paint. 

Like all other woodpeckers, he is a hewer of 
timber, chiselling out a parlor — or rather, perhaps, 
a, nursery —in a dead limb or tree-trunk, where he 
rears his young and trains them in the way they 

124 


A JOLLY RED—HEAD. 125 


should oo. I have known him to drill his nest in 
a fence-stake, while the telegraph poles along the 
railroad, although they must be hard and tough, 
often afford him a nesting-place, and it is amusing 
to see him bolt from his cavity whenever a train 
dashes along. 

It is to be regretted that our bird has not a more 
musical voice, and yet his well-known G-r-r-u-k, 
g-r-r-u-k and g-u-r-r-l, g-u-r-r-l and kt-r-r, kt-r-r are 
by no means disagreeable, but are suggestive of 
the good-nature and buoyancy of spirit that ani- 
mate his bosom. If he is not much of a vocalist, 
he still seems to be a lover of music. Listen to 
him as he plays a tune on that shell-bark hickory- 
tree, or beats his tattoo on the slate roof. He evi- 
dently engages in this exercise, in part at least, 
for the sake of the musical effect, else why should 
he drum on the roof where no insects are to be 
found, or upon an old tin pan that he has dis- 
covered out on the commons ? 

There has been some dispute as to how he pro- 
duces this quick succession of raps, several writers 
contending that he does it by rapidly striking to- 
gether his mandibles. This cannot be the true 
explanation, for I have often watched him at his 
rehearsals,and have always noticed that the sound 


126 | A JOLLY RED—-HEAD. 


varies according to. the object upon which he ham- 
mers. For instance, if it is a large hollow tree, 
the sound is coarse and resonant, as one would ex- 
pect. If he beats upon a piece of partly loosened 
bark, his tune is sharp and penetrating. On a tin 
or slate roof the sound is precisely what it would 
be if you or I should pound rapidly upon the same 
object with a similar instrument. But how can he 
beat so fast with his bill? Just as a drummer boy 
deftly taps his snare drum so rapidly that you 
cannnot count the strokes, and almost think that 
his drumsticks must be small boards rounded at 
the end. 

Of all the woodpeckers that I have studied, the 
red-head is the most expert on the wing. Of 
course, he follows the fashion of the family when 
he flies, going in a kind of gallop from one perch 
to another. But other woodpeckers seem to re- 
gard flying as a serious business, and are therefore 
on the wing only as much as is necessary to secure 
food and escape from their foes. Not so with our 
crimson-headed acrobat, who often performs the 
most amazing feats of scaling in the air out of 
pure exuberance of spirits. He must have some 
valve of escape for his rollicksome nature, and so — 
he frequently hurls himself out into the air as if 


A JOLLY RED-—HEAD. | 127 


shot from a cannon, performs some exploit, such 
as poising, whirling, darting straight upward, and 
almost turning a somersault, and then circles 
gracefully back to his upright floor of bark, crying 
exultingly, “ G-r-r-e-e-l, g-r-r-e-e-l !” which being 
interpreted means, “ Wasn't that a clever trick?” 
Often, it is true, he makes a dash for an insect, 
just as the wood-pewee or the great crested fly- 
catcher does; but I am inclined to think that 
many of his feats are performed for pure love of 
frolic. 

I have watched a dozen or more of these birds 
engaging in their wing-exercises in a _ favorite 
woodland, which might have been called their 
gymnasium. ‘They had selected a certain tree for 
a point of departure, and with loud chattering 
would dash away after one another, describe a 
graceful circle, and then plunge back into the 
tree. At times their cries seemed to be half- 
angry. Still, the whole performance seemed so 
jolly that it reminded me of a company of children 
playing “base” or “black-man.” These birds 
certainly have some sense of humor, and enjoy a 
romp as much as the most playful school-boys. 

One of their favorite pastimes is playing “ hide- 
and-seek ” about the trunks of trees. It is amus- 


128 A JOLLY RED—HEAD. 


ing to see two of them peep at each other a mo- 
ment around the bole of a tree, and then jerk their 
heads back, precisely as you have seen children do 
in playing “ peek-a-boo.” Besides they often play | 
“catch” or “tag,” dashing pell-mell after each 
other among the trees, until you wonder they do 
not dash themselves to atoms. Few birds are 
more expert dodgers. 

A pair of bluebirds had a nest in a box near my 
house last spring. They seemed to be greatly 
vexed by the presence of a red-head which was in 
the habit of coasting on the maples along the 
street. They would make a quick dash at him, but 
the “artful dodger ” would often slip dexterously 
around to the other side of the tree out of harm’s 
way. Sometimes, however, he would stand his 
ground, and present his long spear of a bill to his 
enemies as they flung themselves at him, and thus 
keep them at a safe distance; for no bluebird 
would care to impale himself on the end of a lance 
like that. Still, the woodpecker would occasion- 
ally lose a feather by failing to be quick enough 
to evade the swift assaults of his enemies. I do 
not know whether he sometimes makes a raid on 
other birds’ nests or not; I hope not; but I have 
noticed that robins and bluebirds have a mortal _ 


A JOLLY RED—HEAD. 129 


hatred of him, especially when he comes into the 
neighborhood of their nests. 

Speaking of bluebirds in connection with the 
red-head, reminds me of a curious freak of bird- 
behavior that I observed one day in July. I was 
strolling along the banks of a small creek, when I 
saw a male bluebird sitting on a limb of an apple- 
tree, while only a few feet away, a red-head was 
busy at work in a cavity of the trunk (which he 
had evidently himself drilled), throwing out the 
chips at a lively rate, and at intervals peeping 
from the hole to see if the coast was clear. [ 
drove both birds away, and then watched them at 
some distance. In afew minutes the bluebird was 
again at his post, while his companion had gone 
back into the cavity to ply his trade of carpentry 
as before. 

What did it mean? Was the bluebird playing 
the rdle of sentinel for the red-head? Or was the 
woodpecker hewing out a home for the bluebird 
by way of accommodation? Or was the bluebird 
only biding his time until the cavity should be 
done, when he intended to drive the busy toiler 
away, and occupy the nest himself? I have never 
been able to come to a decision in the matter. 


One of the most curious antics I have ever seen 


130 A JOLLY RED—-HEAD. 


the red-head perform is his taking a shower-bath. 
How does he do it? you ask. During a light rain 
I sometimes see him clinging lengthwise of a small 
limb, spread out his wings until the feathers are 
separated as much as possible, and then flap them 
slowly back and forth, as you frequently swing 
your arms when you want to expand your chest. 
In this way the clean, refreshing drops percolate 
his plumage and renovate it of all accumulations 
of dust. Very often have I seen him go through 
this quaint performance, and always during a light 
shower, so that I feel justified in the conclusion 
that he is, on such occasions, taking a shower-bath. 
Ah! that is the reason the handsome fellow’s tri- 
colored suit, in spite of his rather dusty occupa- 
tion of hewing out cavities in trees, always looks 
so tidy. You cannot see a fleck on his white vest 
or vermilion collar or blue-black “cutaway.” 

From youth to old age our bird is a cunning, 
tricksy spirit. Ah! yes, there is the red-head, 
junior — but hold! his head is black instead of 
crimson ; so that we may say without contradic- 
tion of terms that he is a black-headed red-head. 
He is a quaint lad. I have seen him clinging to 
the feathers of the parent bird, hke a child hang- - 


ing to his mother’s skirts, and screaming for some- 


A JOLLY RED—HEAD. 131 


thing to eat, and I must say that the trick is su- 
perlatively funny; all the more so because of its 
decidedly human air. 

Even when Master Red-head has grown as large 
as his mother he will often run after her and shriek 
for his dinner. But when his stomach is full of 
tidbits, he and his playmates have rare sport to- 
bogganing (though they always perfer to go uphill 
instead of down) on the trunks of trees, playing 
hide-and-seek, and flying race. There are many 
other things that might be said about this clever 
bird. He deserves an ode all to himself, and in 
some respects might claim it as justly as the sky- 
lark or the nightingale. 


{[Nots. —I take pleasure in acknowledging the courtesy of the editors of 
the Youth’s Companion in publishing this paper, at my request, in time to 
be included in this volume. ] 


A RED-THROATED RED-HEAD. 


In my collection of mounted birds, comprising 
a number of rare and beautiful specimens, there is 
none that I prize more highly than the yellow- 
bellied woodpecker. As I write, I have set him 
before me on my desk, and will describe his mark- 
ings so that you may recognize him at a glance if 
you happen to meet him in one of your rambles to 
the woods. 

His whole crown is crimson, bordered all around 
by black. A large carmine patch on his throat 
makes him look just a little frightful; as if he had 
been murdered, and the blood was streaming out 
and staining his feathers. In the specimen before 
me the red throat-patch is slightly flaked with 
white. Across his breast he wears a bib (as Olive 
Thorne Miller would say) of blue-black. The rest 
of his under parts are soiled with pale yellow, 
from which he gets his name. The sides are 
speckled and striped with blackish, gray and buff. 
Above he is beautifully mottled with black and 

132 


A RED-THROATED RED—HEAD. 138 


white, the black predominating on the wings and 
tail, and the white on the neck, back and rump. 
Two white strips, one above and the other be- 
low the eye, extend along the side of the head, 
while a black band stretches back through the eye 
and down the sides of the neck. Much of the 
white of the upper parts is tinged with yellow. 

It will be seen from the foregoing description 
that this bird makes quite a variegated toilet, and 
I must say that he presents a handsome appear- 
ance as he clings to the bole of a tree, or hurls 
himself through the woods with outspread wings 
and tail, his mottled plumage flashing gayly in 
the sun. To me he has been a source of infinite 
delight. 

He evidently has some sense of humor. Of 
course he is a great deal like a child in his choice 
of amusements, but his very artlessness gives his 
behavior an especial charm. Besides, I have been 
as much of a boy as he. How often have I played 
** peek-a-boo ” with him in the woods! He will 
fly to a tree-trunk near the place where I am 
standing, and when he is sure that I have seen 
him, he flits to the other side of his curved 
arboreal wall, where he remains for a while, bend- 
ing his head at intervals beyond the margin of his 


134 A RED-THROATED RED-HEAD. 


hiding-place to peep at me, and then jerking it 
back. All the while a gleam of laughter seems to 
shine in his eye, as if he were enjoying the game 
of “ bo-peep.” The tricksy fellow! How much I 
should like to wring his neck, just a little, out of 
pure admiration of his cunning ways ! 

Although he seeks the deep seclusion of the 
forest in the main, seldom deigning to come to the 
city, yet when you visit him in his haunts he 
seems to be more sociably disposed than any of his 
kinsmen. He does not resent your intrusion, as 
the golden-winged and red-bellied woodpeckers do, 
but rather courts than shuns your society. In the 
spring I seldom take a stroll in the woods without 
receiving a courteous greeting from one or two 
and sometimes a half-dozen of these woodpeckers, 
which whirl about me, connecting the trees with 
graceful festoons of flight. I am sure they talk to 
me, expressing their pleasure at my presence, and 
asking me innumerable questions about my busi- 
ness, the book I hold in my hand, and the notes I 
am jotting down; but I am too stupid to learn the 
woodpecker dialect, as I should, to hold intelli- 
gent converse with them. 

One day dwells with special distinctness in my - 


memory ; it seems a pleasant arbor in my ornitho- 


A RED-THROATED RED—HEAD. 135 


logical experiences. It was the fifth of April, and 
the sun shone brightly through the fretwork of 
overarching branches. Two yellow-bellied wood- 
peckers were chasing each other about in the 
woods. They were a beautiful sight as they went 
sliding up the trunks of the trees, their variegated 
figures sharply outlined against the gray bark. 
Around and around, now about the stem of a 
sapling, now from tree to tree, they raced and pur- 
sued each other, making the sylvan spot glance 
and twinkle with black and white. It was nota 
quarrel at all; only a frolic; for the moment they 
would lose sight of each other, one would cry: 
“© Wh-e-e-r-r, wh-e-e-r-r?” and the other would 
respond: “ H-e-r-r-e-ah! h-e-r-r-e-ah!” Then when 
they had found each other, they would exclaim in 
low, caressing tones: “ W-e-e-k-ah! w-e-e-k-ah!” 
Sometimes they uttered a loud call somewhat like 
the cry of the kingfisher, though not so shrill and 
terrifying. For an hour I sat watching them play- 
ing their pranks. 

Like all other woodpeckers, the yellow-bellied | 
beats his tattoo on the bark of a tree, or a hollow 
limb. I have imagined that his drumming is much 
coarser than that of his fellows, who help him to 
fill the woods with their ra-ta-ta. At all events, I 


136 A RED—-THROATED RED—HEAD. 


have often tested my skill in guessing that it was 
he who was producing the resounding noise I 
heard, and have been correct every time. Perhaps 
he has a stouter drum-stick than his fellow-crafts- 
men, or chooses a larger piece of bark for a 
drum-head. 

As before stated, he usually is found in the 
_ depths of the woods; but sometimes he comes to 
the suburbs of the town, and even goes coasting 
on the maple directly in front of the house. When 
doing so, he seems to be as much at home as in his 
native wildwood. Indeed, I do not know a bird 
that seems to be more devoid of self-consciousness, 
and henee more natural in his deportment. 

In some respects he differs from other wood- 
peckers. Mr. Ridgway calls him a “ sapsucker,” 
and does not apply the name woodpecker to him 
at all. A favorite author says that he “lacks the 
long, extensile tongue, which enables the other 
woodpeckers to probe the winding galleries of 
wood-eating larve, and is known to feed largely on 
the green inner bark of trees. In some localities 
he is said to destroy many trees by stripping off 
the bark.” However, if he sometimes does damage 
of this kind, his visits are of great benefit to or- 


chards and groves, where he devours large num- 


A RED-THROATED RED-—HEAD. Lat 


bers of worms which bore into the trees, and would 
be extremely destructive if permitted to thrive. 
These birds breed from the northern parts of 
the United States northward, and are therefore, 
only migrants in the latitude where I have been 
studying them. But they do not seem to be in a 
hurry to reach their northern summer resort. 
They must have tarried here fully six weeks in 
the spring, and [ had almost concluded that they 
meant to take up their abode with us ; but one day 
about the middle of May when I sauntered out to 
the woods, I found that all of them had gone. 
Really the parting was a sad one to me, but I hope 
some other lover of the “ feathered republic of the 
groves” has found them just as companionable in 
their breeding haunts as they have been here. 


BRILLIANTS IN PLUMES. 


WE sometimes see pictures of birds which cause 
us to wonder whether there really are such lay- 
ishly colored creatures in the world of feathers, 
especially in the neighborhood in which we live, 
or whether they are only freaks of the artist’s 
fancy. The pictures may be purely imaginative, 
as far as the figures of the birds and the arrange- 
ment of the colors are concerned; but it would 
puzzle any artist to conceive a bird more brilliantly 
and diversely hued than some of the warblers. It 
is not straining a metaphor to say that they are 
indeed gems in feathers; yet their colors are so 
rich and so exquisitely arranged that they can by 
no means be called tawdry. One never thinks of 
their being overdressed. 

The warblers comprise a large family of small 
birds, some of them quite tiny, and all of them ex- 
ceedingly supple in movement. Many of them 
can be identified only by the most careful and 
patient effort, such a genius have they for eluding 

138 


BRILLIANTS IN PLUMES. 139 


the observer by ensconcing themselves in thickets 
and tall trees. For a good many years I have 
been trying to acquire bird-lore, and pride myself a 
little on my skill in identifying new species; but I 
must confess that several species of warblers have 
often outwitted me. They gave me glimpses of 
their shining plumes as they flashed into view for 
a moment and then plunged headlong into the 
copse, hiding themselves so effectually as to make 
it impossible for me to find them with all my 
beating and peering about. It is provoking, too, 
to see small birds flitting about in the tops of tall 
trees, trilling their defiance at you, but never 
dropping low enough to give you a chance to dis- 
tinguish their markings, although you ogle them 
with an opera glass by the hour. 

But there are many warblers that are not so shy. 
They come out of the thicket into plain view, per- 
haps to identify the observer, thus giving him an 
opportunity to return the compliment. I am 
unable to say how many of these feathered marvels 
I have seen here, but the number has been aston- 
ishingly large. 

.The student of bird-life is constantly meeting 
with delightful surprises. One day in May I was 


pursuing my favorite out-door study — ornithology, 


140 BRILLIANTS IN PLUMES. 


of course —in a green, sparsely-wooded hollow, 
when I chanced to come to the foot of what was 
once a sand or gravel bank, but which is now over- 
grown in most places with saplings, bushes, briers 
and vines. It curves around in a semicircle, 
somewhat irregular in outline, the radius being 
scarcely more than ten or twelve yards. Standing 
in the level area below, I saw at least fourteen 
species of bright-hued birds, most of them warblers, 
and was able to note their markings with little 
difficulty. I do not mean to say that all of them 
appeared in sight at the same moment, but within 
half an hour, or perhaps less, I observed every 
member of this brilliant galaxy. To say that I was 
excited, elated, thrilled, is to put the fact very 
mildly. If I ever wished myself an artist I did 
during that half-hour. Thatsylvan scene, studded 
here and there with bright jewels in feathers, 
would be worthy the efforts of a genius. They 
shifted about before me like the changing colors of 
a kaleidoscope. 

One of the warblers that fiitted in the bushes at 
the right and then flew to a sapling, was the male 
redstart, a real woodland exquisite. Nothing 
could be more neat and natty than his lustrous 
black suit, with its flame-colored patches on the 


BRILLIANTS IN PLUMES. 141 


breast, wings and tail. What a picture he makes 
as he dashes in and out amid the foliage, the 
orange-red adornments scintillating in the sun! 
No warbler is more dexterous on the wing than 
this little gymnast, who has some of the qualities 
of the flycatchers. Now he plunges in among the 
thick branches and leaves after a worm, and the 
next instant darts out like a flash and catches a 
enat or fly in mid-air, with more skill and grace- 
fulness than a bee martin or a wood pewee. 

He chooses for his habitat thick woodlands, 
where he sings, when in the lyrical mood, from 
morning till night. His vocal effort consists of an 
explosive little trill, not very melodious, but quite 
cheerful, which may be represented by the syllables : 
Tswee-a, tswee-a, tswe-tswe-tswe-tswe-tswe ! Some- 
times, as he dashes about recklessly and at a break- 
néck speed amongst the trees, he snaps viciously 
with his mandibles. J am of the opinion that this 
occurs, at least in most instances, when he is in 
pursuit of his rival, who has been trying to steal 
the affections of his lady love. 

And I don’t blame him for becoming jealous ; 
Miss Redstart is a charmin g little creature, almost as 
handsome as her lover. Her colors are more 


modest, the lustrous black becoming grayish-olive, 


142 BRILLIANTS IN PLUMES. 


and the flame color plain yellow; but her manners 
are so graceful and her looks so sweet and inno- 
cent, one does not wonder that a duel is sometimes 
fought on her account. Ladies in the human 
world not half so handsome have caused bitter 
feuds among male competitors for their hands. 

A still more strikingly colored bird is the black- 
throated green warbler, a perfect chorus of hues. 
Imagine, if you can, a lithe, feathered sprite, about 
five inches in length, his back and crown a bright 
yellow-olive, his forehead, asuperciliary stripe, and 
the sides of the head a rich yellow, while a dark 
olive line runs back through the eye; then his en- 
tire throat and breast are jet black, and his sides 
streaked with the same ; his dusky wings have two 
white bars and his outer tail feathers are edged 
with white. He is elegant beyond compare, a per- 
fect brilliant in the bird world. I wish some 
artist with a deft brush would paint him for my 
readers in all his variegated splendor. Surely 
nature in this instance is lavish of her tints. 

In marked contrast with the gorgeous array of 
colors in this bird, are the plain black and white of 
the creeping warbler. The colors are arranged in 
stripes or bars everywhere except on the belly. If 
first saw him gliding up and down the bole of a 


BRILLIANTS IN PLUMES. 143 


sapling on the sandbank, and it seemed to me that 
he was almost as handsome in his striped suit as 
his highly colored congener just described. He 
has one decided advantage over other warblers, for 
not only can he flit nimbly from twig to twig, but 
can also creep on the trunk of a tree, upward, 
downward or laterally as suits his whim, and do it 
as skillfully as the nuthatch himself. He has a 
fine, rather loud little trill, which he repeats again 
and again, as he hunts for tidbits among the 
branches. 

Rivalling the black-throated green warbler for 
briliancy of plumage, is the black and yellow 
warbler, now called more frequently the magnolia 
warbler. Look at him flashing into sight and 
making his bow. His crown is ash, bordered 
below back of the eye with white, which is also 
the color of the wing-bars and under tail coverts. 
His back is black, the feathers skirted with olive. 
Notice his yellow rump; also the rich yellow of 
his under parts, the breast and sices streakea with 
black, crowding together on the chest and cutting 
off the gamboge yellow of the throat. 

He is one of our most abundant migrants, sing- 
ing as he pursues his pilgrimage to the north in 
the pleasant springtime. His trill is scarcely as 


144 BRILLIANTS IN PLUMES. 


loud and explosive as the redstart’s. He breeds 
from Northern New England, New York and 
Michigan to the regions about Hudson’s Bay, where 
he and his blithe little mate build their nests in 
spruce and hemlock and rear their young. 

There is something so exquisite and picturesque 
about the chestnut-sided warbler, trilling in the 
saplings before me, that I am half-disposed toaward 
him the palm as the most dainty birdlet — if I may 
coin such a word—on my sandbank. You may 
always know him by the chestnut chain that 
extends along the sides of his body from neck to 
‘flank. But he is otherwise curiously marked. 
His crown is pure yellow, bordered with white, 
which is again enclosed in black. An irregular 
black crescent partly circles the eye, the lower horn 
curving downward and connecting with the chest- 
nut chain before spoken of. His back is streaked 
with black and pale yellow, and there is also a 
yellowish blotch on the wing. In spite of the 
elaborateness of my description, I fear I have not 
pictured him as vividly as he deserves, the party- 
hued little darling. To be appreciated he must be 
seen. His song is much like that of the magnolia 
warbler. 


The Connecticut warbler is less flashy than the 


BRILLIANTS IN PLUMES. 145 


other birds named, but still quite beautiful with 
his olive-green back, ashy head, throat and breast, 
and yellow’ under parts. Still more plainly attired 
is the Tennessee warbler, a tiny bird, trying to con- 
ceal himself in the clump of bushes at the right. 
However, the golden-crowned thrush, or oven bird, 
walking about so deliberately on the ground, could 
scarcely be called plain, although his plumage is 
not brilliant. You may always know him by his 
orange-brown or orange-rufous crown, bordered on 
each side by a black stripe, which runs back to the 
nape. 

His back is olive-green, and his white under 
parts are thickly streaked with dusky or black. 
His song once heard in the depths of a woodland 
will never be forgotten, it is so loud and startling, 
as it breaks suddenly upon the silence. When you 
hear a bird rapidly repeating the notes, 7e-cha, te- 
cha, te-cha ! with the accent on the second syllable, 
you may rest assured that you have heard the 
oven bird. He gets his name from the peculiar 
form of his nest, which is indeed a curiosity in 
bird architecture. 

Similar to him in some respects, though more 
mezzo-tinted, is the water wagtail, walking about 
on the yround, and “ teetering” like a sandpiper. 


146 BRILLIANTS IN PLUMES. 


In the hollow to the right I find another gem, the - 
blue golden-winged warbler, whose general color 
is slaty blue, relieved by a yellow crown, yellow 
wing-bars, a black throat and a dark stripe through 
the eye. 

Besides the warblers described, I espy a cat-bird 
trying to screen himself in the thicket before me, 
where he is building a nest; in the trees of the 
adjoining hollow I catch glimpses of a Baltimore 
and an orchard oriole ; while an indigo bird in my 
rear hurls out his loud, defiant cluster of notes, 
which echo down the vale. Many other warblers, 
some of them just as superb in color as those to 
which we have paid our respects, have been seen 
in the woods near by; but a sufficient number 
have been described to prove that bright-hued birds 
are not to be seen in highly colored paintings only, 
but in very fact as well, and that no one need go 
to distant climes to find gems in feathers. 

Not only are they beautiful of plumage, but 
there are rare days in May when they fill the woods 
with their “anvil chorus.” While there may not 
be a great deal of melody in the voice of a single 
songster, yet when a score of them are trilling 
at once in the trees and bushes, in various runs and 


quavers, the combined effect is enrapturing, mak- 


BRILLIANTS IN PLUMES. 147 


ing one dream over again all the old myths of the 
sirens and sybils. I doubt if either Orpheus or 
Ulysses would have been able to pass the fabled 
isles if a company of warblers had been the 
enchanting musicians. 

One of a speculative turn of mind cannot help 
wondering why nature studs her most sequestered 
nooks with these rare and beautiful brilliants. 
Why does she not bejewel the trees of our cities 
and public highways with such gorgeous creatures 
to delight the common eye? It would seem that 
the most stolid and prosaic persons would feel a 
thrill of esthetic pleasure at sight of them. Per- 
haps Emerson, in his lines to the recluse Rhodora, 
gives the most plausible answer to this inquiry ; 
at all events it is a poetical conception : 


‘¢ Rhodora! if thesages ask thee why 

This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky, 

Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, 
Then beauty is its own excuse for being.” 


No doubt other reasons might be assigned for 
nature’s oft-time unobtrusive moods and manners, 
but there is something peculiarly tranquilizing in 
resting content in the poet’s conclusion; for, say 


148 BRILLIANTS IN PLUMES. 


what you will, the mind does grow weary of this 
ever-grinding effort to find the “moral uses” of 
things, and we often long merely to glide on the 
smooth current of life without so much as dipping 
an oar, or asking why or whence or whither the 
current is bearing us. | 


DOTS IN FEATHERS. 


In the bird manuals and keys they are mostly 
called kinglets, although they used to be called 
wrens. Only two species visit this locality, the 
ruby-crowned and the golden-crowned. ‘They are 
very dainty little creatures, about four inches in 
length, and flit and poise in the woods as gracefully 
as fairiesat play. ‘They are not quite as lithe in form 
as most of the smaller wood warblers, being what 


99 


you would call more “ chuffy,” though they are 
almost, if not quite, as active and alert as they. 
Let us first make our obeisance to the golden- 
crowned kinglet. A royal little personage he is 
in very fact, with his bright yellow coronal and 
golden gem set in the center, gleaming so bril- 
lantly in the sunshine. On each side and in front 
of the yellow crown-patch is a black stripe, which 
separates it from the white line above the eye and 
on the forehead. His general color, except the 
parts named, is olive-green or olive-gray, brighter 
149 


150 DOTS IN FEATHERS. 


toward the rear and duller toward the head. 
Observe, too, that he wears two white bars across 
each wing. | 

There are times in the spring and autumn when 
these dainty birds take possession of the woods, 
flitting about gaily in every bush and tree in search 
of insects, and filling the air with their fine 
gossamer notes, which may be represented by the 
syllable 2-e-e-e, or ts-e-e-e. Sometimes they may be 
heard, if not seen, in the tops of the tallest trees ; 
but as far as I have observed them, they prefer the 
bushes and saplings, and even descend occasionally 
to the ground, where they dance about on the leaves 
in search of food. Like all small birds, they are 
expert tilters, and can easily balance on a spray or 
leaf, often clinging to the lower side; and more 
than onceI have seen them poise on the wing like 
a humming-bird, while they gathered nits or gnats 
from the foliage. Yet, agile as they are, they 
sometimes miss their footing, or a twig snaps 
beneath their weight, and it is amusing to see them 
flutter and wheel to recover their balance. Acci- 
dents, you know, will happen in the best of families, 
even in the family of the kinglets. 

How surprising that such tiny creatures should 
be so hardy! One would think that if a snow- 


DOTS IN FEATHERS. 151 


storm should get them in its grip it would press 
the life out of their slight forms. But such is not 
the fact, for they linger here in the fall long after 
their more tender and delicate relatives in plumes 
have hied away to the “Sunny South.” During 
a snow-storm in November, I walked out toa deep 
ravine in Northeastern Ohio, and found a bevy of 
my little golden-crowned friends flitting about in 
the trees as cheerful as you please. They seemed 
to say, “ The snow doesn’t hurt us: no, indeed! 
It’s good for our health, sir.” 

The foregoing was written in November, 1890. 
I may briefly sum up the results of my study of 
this bird during the following winter. Although 
the weather was rather severe, he remained in the 
woods until the first of February, and seemed to 
be very happy even when the wind was howling 
through the bare branches and the snow flying in 
the cold gusts. Rainy days, when not too cold, 
seemed to puthim ina cheerful mood. He donned 
his little water-proof suit, tilted, tseeped, gathered 
nits and buds, and only stopped at intervals to 
shake the drops from his plumage. Strange tosay, 
however, when the weather became mild during the 
first week in February, he left my woodland for 
ather regions. But where did he go? Did he hie 


152 DOTS IN FEATHERS. 


to more northern latitudes where there was winter 
in reality and not merely in name? It is an open 
question. 

Much as I have associated with these birds, I 
have never had the good fortune to find a nest, for 
they breed farther north than this latitude; mostly 
in the extreme northern part of the United States 
and northward, though sometimes as far south as 
Massachusetts. A writer on ornithology says that 
their nests are “a ball-like mass of green moss, four 
inches or more in diameter, attached to the ex- 
tremity of the branch of a pine or fir-tree, lined 
with hair and soft feathers.” Sometimes the nests 
are pendant, at other times only partly so, and one 
nest was found in Massachusetts which was fast- 
ened to twigs above and supported by branches 
below. The birds are quaint little geniuses, and 
do not seem to follow any fixed rule in their house- 
building. 

But it is high time to introduce you to the other 
member of the family — the ruby-crowned kinglet. 
It is a little difficult to distinguish between the 
young of these two species, and perhaps only the 
expert ornithologist is able to do so in every in- 
stance. However, after the first year there is no 


difficulty ; the ruby-crowned has no black or yellow 


DOTS IN FEATHERS. 153 


about his head, his general color is more greenish 
than that of the golden-crowned, and to my eyes 
his form is not quite so well-proportioned, being a 
little over-heavy in front. 

Then you must look for a minium-red or ruby 
patch in the center of his crown. But hold! It 
is said by some ornithologists that our kinglet 
must be two years old before he dares to put this 
vermilion ornament upon his head. Perhaps he 
does not become of age until then. I wonder 
whether that is the age at which citizens of the 
kinglet republic are allowed to vote? 

I wish you could hear the saucy and varied little 
song of the ruby-crown. Not only in the spring 
have I heard it, but also in the autumn, as, for ex- 
ample, on the seventeenth and twentieth of Octo- 
ber. “ Ching, ching, ching-a-lang, cha-cha-cha-cha!” 
he warbles, looking at you as if he expected an 
outburst of applause. 

I cannot tell you how much If like this Tom 
Thumb in pinions. Many, many times I have 
stood in the woods beneath the overarching bushes, 
where the shadows were deep, and held converse 
with him, while he hopped about only a few feet 
away. No bird has amore knowing and intelligent 
eye. He seems to know that I would not harm 


154 DOTS IN FEATHERS. 


him for the world, and that there is no risk in being 
confiding. And then he seems to be so inquisitive 
—a genuine Paul Pry in feathers. I sometimes 
fancy that I can descry a diminutive interrogation 
point dangling from every one of his eyelashes. 


THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED 
TITMOUSE. 


A RARE little genius, I had almost said, a moun- 
tebank in feathers, is the tufted titmouse, alias 
chickadee, alias winter-king. His rather proud 
bearing, his tall, pointed cap with its frontlet of 
black, and the reddish brown stripe on the side 
of his body, all combine to give him a distinct mil- 
itary air, so that one is almost tempted to dub him 
captain in addition to the other descriptive titles 
by which he is known in the Middle States. His 
crest is a striking part of his toilet, sitting jauntily 
on his graceful head and looking like a miniature 
pyramid. He has also donned a whitish vest and 
a leaden-gray coat. Thus it will be seen that he 
wears the “golden mean” between the colors of 
the Union and the Confederate soldier’s regi- 
mentals, so as not to appear sectional in his senti- 
ments, I suppose. All he needs to make him an 
out-and-out captain are a pair of epaulettes and a 
display of brass buttons. 

155 


156 THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE. 


Among all my acquaintances in feathers there 
are none whose friendship I prize more highly than 
that of this crested tenant of the woods; and since 
our intimacy began, years ago, he has never been 
cuilty of a single act of indecorum that would 
tend in the least to alienate my affections from him. 

I have called him “a mountebank in feathers.” 
That may, at first blush, seem to contain a sly sug- 
gestion, or even a serious disparagement of the 
bird ; but I assure you I mean no detraction what- 
ever. I have simply yielded to that common ca- 
price or impulse of human nature which often leads 
us to give uncouth and even apparently malignant 
names to the persons and objects we love the most, 
when we really mean the precise opposite. 

Still, to be frank, our bird has some of the man- 
ners of the mountebank. He often tries to attract 
your attention to himself by his loud alarm calls, 
when there is nothing whatever to frighten him, - 
and then, when he thinks you are watching him, he 
begins to poise and tilt among the branches like a 
trapeze performer in a circus. Oh! how agile he 
is. To play pranks on a horizontal perch is too 
commonplace an exploit for his exuberant spirits, 
and so he amuses you by clinging to the vertical - 


stem of a bush or sapling, hurling himself from 


THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE. 157 


side to side, or by creeping up a tree trunk like a 
nuthatch, while one of his favorite accomplish- 
ments is to hold himself back downward to the 
under side of a twig and peck away industriously 
at some rare delicacy that he has found; then he 
will perhaps let himself drop, and wheeling around, 
dexterously alight upon a branch below him or upon 
the leaf-strewn ground. 

Apparently a great many of these athletic per- 
formances are indulged in for the sake of display, 
for he frequently looks up at you with twinkling 
eyes and a tstp of inquiry, as if he said: “ There! 
wasn't that a clever trick? Beat it if you can!” 
His feats are often surprising, and he presents a 
handsome picture as he flings his rather roly-poly, 
but graceful little form into various striking 
attitudes. 

Gymnast that he is, he sometimes misses his 
footing, or the twig upon which he leaps breaks 
beneath his weight, and then there follows a ludi- 
crous scramble for another foothold. When I 
laugh aloud at his mishaps, he looks at me with 
comical seriousness out of his dark, globular eyes, 
and scolds T'stp, tsep-a-tdat-tat ' but all the while his 
birdship is as much amused as I am, only he will 
not “let on.” 


158 THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE. 


“What are you laughing at-at-at?” he cries. 
“T see nothing to laugh at-at-at!” But I know 
he is himself all the while laughing in his sleeve, 
the sly little rogue-rogue-rogue. 

Have you ever heard his loud, clarion spring 
song or whistle, which sounds so much lke a re- 
veille as it wakes the echoes of the woodland ? 
Peto, peto, peto !— repeated quite rapidly, with the 
accent on the first syllable — it rings from the tree- 
tops, announcing to all the forces of nature that it 
is time to awake from their winter slumbers, paint 
the woods and fields with green, and fill the air 
with song. I sometimes hear that call in the 
autumn and winter, when it is less vigorous and 
stirring, having a pensive strain running through 
it. I suppose the bird has his moods of sadness 
like the rest of us, but I do not believe he will ever 
turn pessimist. 

While I am speaking of his vocal performances, 
I may as well describe his various alarm calls. 
The first hint you will have of his presence as you 
enter the woods will be an exceedingly fine, almost 
gossamer, tseep or tsip. My observation has been 
that he is almost always, if not always, heard be- 
fore he allows himself to be seen, thus reversing 
the advice that is so often given to little people. 


THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE. 159 


If you continue to approach his hiding-place, which 
is not difficult to find, he will perhaps begin to 
scold or chaff by saying, Tsip, peerr, peerr, peerr ! 
and then if you do what he commands — that is, if 
you peer — he will at length break out into a vo- 
ciferous protest against your intrusion, as he hops 
and tilts nervously among the branches. Tsick, 
tsick-a-tat, tsick-a-tdt-tat-tat! he cries, sometimes 
omitting the tszck, at other times the tat. It must 
be remembered that the first part of this familiar 
call of the chickadee is pitched on a very high key, 
while the latter part—that is, the tdt or dé — 
strikes an alto note much lower in the scale. 

While he is never avery musical bird, ike many 
of his fellow-tenants of the woods, the thrushes, 
robins and some of the sparrows, yet I have sev- 
eral times listened to him with rare delight as he 
warbled a ditty, half-sad and half-glad, while flit- 
ting nimbly from twig to twig. The fact is, he 
has so large a repertory of notes that one can 
never be certain that one has heard all the sounds 
he is capable of producing. 

A great deal of his time is spent in securing a 
- livelihood, as is the case with most of his human 
relatives, and he finds quite an extensive larder in 


the woods. I often see him catching an insect on 


160 THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE. 


the wing, or extracting a worm or larva from a 
crevice in the bark, or picking nits from the under 
side of a leaf like a warbler or a kinglet. Of 
course he eats insects, but he is also in part a vege- 
tarian. More than once have I seen him pick a 
dogwood berry from its stem, deftly scale off the 
carmine pulp, and then, taking the “pit” in his 
claws, hold it on a limb, crack it and then bore 
out the kernel, which he eats with arelish. Be- 
neath the dogwood-trees I often find the ground 
strewn with the shells of these broken pits. 

One day while watching a chickadee nibbling at 
a tidbit that he held in his claws, I became ex- 
tremely curious to know what it was. A way to 
find out soon opened. Suddenly the morsel slipped — 
from his grasp and fell to the ground, the bird 
darting after it in atwinkle. At the same mo- 
ment I made a spring for the spot — it was only a 
few feet away — and frightened him off before he 
could get his eye on his lost luncheon. It turned 
out to bea grain of corn, partly nibbled off at the 
end, which the little thief had pilfered from my 
neighbor’s corn-field. 

On another occasion I saw one of these birds 
making a meal on some viand that he seemed to 
think very good. My curiosity got the better of 


THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE. 161 


my kindness of heart. I made a sudden leap and 
uttered a loud shout, causing Master Titmouse to 
let his dinner drop and dash wildly away. This 
time I found that he had been feasting on an 
acorn, which he had partly eaten. A bird student 
must be forgiven such wanton pranks in the in- 
terest of science, even if a chickadee does lose his 
dinner occasionally. Still, I was half conscience- 
smitten on account of the nngracious deed, and so 
I placed the acorn on top of the leaves in plain 
sight, to give the hungry bird a change to return 
and finish his repast after I had left the place. 

Seldom does one see a prettier picture than this 
bird presents when he lays back his crest so cun- 
ningly and plunges his head into the heaps of 
brown leaves that strew the ground, while he 
hunts for a nut or an insect. And then he some- 
times picks up a leaf with his strong mandibles, 
giving it a vigorous toss that sends it flying several 
feet away. Everything he does seems cunning on 
account of his pert, conceited air. 

I must make haste to say a word about the nest- 
ing habits of the chickadees. They usually begin 
early in April to find nesting places, choosing as 
a site for their nurseries the deserted holes of 


woodpeckers, or natural cavities in trees and stubs. 


162 THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE. 


It is said that they will nest in boxes placed in 
the woods for that purpose, although I have never 
tried the experiment. The females are such close 
sitters, so determined to protect their eggs or 
young from danger, that they often have to be 
lifted from the nest before the eggs can be secured. 

Most of my observations have been made in a 
large tract of woods, in the thick brambles and 
bushes of which these birds find a covert both in 
summer and winter, converting many a shady, 
well-protected nook into a real bird’s boudoir; but 
some of my friends who live in the country and 
who have a warm love for the birds, have, at my re- 
quest, furnished me an interesting account of the 
habits of the little “ winter-kings,” as they call them, 
that find a dwelling place about the house and out- 
buildings. The birds become quite tame and famil- 
iar because of the kind treament they receive. 

One little bird came into the kitchen through 
the window that was let down from the top, and 
built her nest in the comb-case hanging beneath 
the clock. She first filled up most of the case 
with coarse grass and then began to line it with 
fine grass, when a meddlesome cat drove her away. 
She would enter the room without fear while the 


women of the household were at work there. 


anes a Te ee oe 


THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE. 163 


Next the little builder went to the bake-oven, 
and found an old paint keg with an ear of corn 
and some nails in it, where she wove “a very nice 
nest,” as my friend says, into which she laid four 
egos; and then the cat again interfered with her 
brood rearing. Not yet disheartened, the per- 
sistent little architect sought a cosey hiding-place 
behind a shutter of the parlor window where a slat 
had been broken out. ‘This space was first filled 
with coarse grass and leaves, and then, as before, 
the inside was lined with fine, fibrous material. 
“ Susan,’ says my correspondent, “ would often sit 
and watch the bird building her neat domicile, and 
when the inside was somewhat filled up, the little 
toiler would creep into the cavity, flutter about 
awhile until it became nicely rounded, and then hie 
away for more building material. After the main 
part of the nest had been finished, the bird attached 
a neck to one side, making the entire structure 
about six inches long. The orifice of the neck was 
just large enough to admit the bird. Here she 
finally succeeded in hatching four nestlings.” 

Another nest was built in an old paper-holder in 
an out-building, and another in a crock in my in- 
formant’s smith-shop. “One of these birds,’ he 


continues, “came down through a hole into my 


164 THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE. 


gun-shop and made her nest on a shelf among some 
bottles near the place I was working, hatching and 
rearing a brood. They always build a long or 
deep nest, with a neck three or four inches in 


length for an entrance. ‘They are easily petted if 


fed on screenings and nuts, coming daily for their 
meals to the window-sill or any other feeding place.” 

My obliging correspondent has also furnished 
me with a description of a quaint trick of one of 
these acute little geniuses in plumes. This inci- 
dent tock place in the house of one of their neigh- 
bors. The bird entered the house by the broken 
sash of an upstairs window, and then flew down 
the stairway into the kitchen, and thence into the 
sitting-room where the mistress had placed some 
cracked nuts on a bureau. Somehow he had es- 
pied them, and now began eating until his hunger 
was appeased, chirping familiarly all the while, 
and then taking a kernel in his beak, he flew to the 
kitchen, up the stairway, and out into the open 
air by way of-the broken sash. And, strange to 
say, this cunning trick was repeated day after day 
until a prowling cat caught the bird. 

The tufted tit deserves a sonnet all to himself, 
but as Iam not a poet, but a plain writer of prose, 


I cannot ring his praises in verse. However, in 


eon 
—— ae 


| 


THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE. 165 


lieu of a poetical tribute, I have thought out a 
little fable, of which he is the hero, although I fear 
it will never take rank with the celebrated fictions 
of AKsop or La Fontaine. It might be entitled 
“ Reasoning in a Circle.” 

One day, while sauntering in my favorite wood- 
land, I exclaimed, somewhat querulously : * What 
are the dogwood berries good for, any way? If 
they were wholesome and sweet like the cherries, 
or even the black-haws, one might readily discover 
their use; but as it is, [I cannot see that they serve 
any good purpose whatever.” 

The words were scarcely out of my mouth before 
a tufted titmouse sprang up into the dogwood-tree 
before me, and seizing one of the crimson berries 
between his mandibles, leisurely scaled off the 
pulp, with many a chip and wink, and then taking 
the “pit” in his claws and holding it firmly upon 
a limb, proceeded to bore out the kernel, which he 
ate with a hearty relish. I felt rebuked at once 
for my petulant fault-finding. “Now do you see 
what these berries are good for?” he demanded, 
blinking at me in his pert way. “ They are in- 
tended to give sustenance to the birds.” 

“ Ah, I see! but of what use are the birds?” I 
queried, nothing loath to keep up the dialogue. 


166 THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE. 


“Well, well! I’m surprised at your stupidity,” 
chattered Master Chickadee, flitting to another 
twig. “ You ought to know that the birds destroy 
many noxious insects that, if permitted to live, 
would do damage to the grain, fruit and forests.” 

“Very true,” I replied; “ but I have still another 
question to ask, and if you can answer that, you 
are wiser than all the philosophers put together. 
Why were the insects made ?” 

“Why —well! Chick — chick — chick-a-da-da! 
chick-a-da-da!’’ he cackled and sputtered, tilting 
perilously on a spray, and then turning a somer- 
sault to cover his confusion, for the query had 
evidently puzzled him for a moment or two; but 
he quickly recovered himself, and looking at me, 
his large, roguish eyes a-twinkle, answered with-— 
out a quaver in his tones: “ The insects, sir, were 
made for the birds to, feed on.” 

“ You are a second Solon!” I broke out in ad- 
miration. “I agree with you. No matter how 
you reason, you circle back to your original start- 
ing-point. The end of creation is found in the 
birds! Would that we could all be as well satis- 
fied with the lot that has been appointed us as you 
seem to be, Master Chickadee.” 


BIRDS ABOUT THE HOUSE. 


MANY young persons, and older ones too, are 
discontented with their homelife,; because they im- 
agine that they have seen everything worth seeing 
in their neighborhood. They have therefore come 
to regard it as humdrum, tame and commonplace. 
_If they could but travel and visit new scenes, 
climb the mountains or roam about Old World 
ruins, they fancy their happiness would be com- 
plete. My friend, if you cannot afford to travel, 
there is no need to feel dissatisfied. There are 
plenty of interesting things around your own 
home to occupy your time, especially if you live in 
the country or in the suburbs of a town, if you will 
only study them. There are the plants, the rocks, 
the insects, and the birds. They will afford con- 
stant opportunity for research and_ recreation. 
Why should not young people give attention to 
the study of these natural objects, instead of frit- 
tering away their time in useless repining or 
building castles in the air? Of course, I do not 

167 


168 ° BIRDS ABOUT THE HOUSE. 


want to take to preaching, but he is a poor writer, 
indeed, who cannot sometimes poimt a moral, and 
he must be a poor reader who cannot occasionally 
endure one. 

I remember that I had myself intended one 
spring to take a trip of a few hundred miles fora 
little special study and relaxation, but when the 
time came to go, there were so many interesting 
things to investigate in my own neighborhood that 
I could not get the consent of my mind to leave 
them, and I have reason to be glad that I remained 
at home. Had I gone on that journey, I should 
have missed some very interesting incidents of the 
bird-life right about my own home. These I shall 
try to describe. 

First, | must tell you about a very sociably dis- 
posed pair of robins which built their nest on the 
balustrade of my veranda, where I watched them 
with rare delight. After the site had been chosen, 
the nest was soon built, and four bluish-green eges 
were deposited in it. Some accident must have 
befallen the male bird, for he never put in his ap- 
pearance after incubation began, and [I cannot 
believe that he would have left all the household 
cares to his wife if he had been able to help her. 


Yet I may be mistaken in my estimate of his char- 


BIRDS ABOUT THE: HOUSE. 169 


acter. Itis just possible that he had found a re- 
treat that was out of the reach of danger, where his 
manners and attire may have answered to Mr. 


Aldrich’s description : 


‘‘ Firm-seated on his green bough, prancing high, 
Gay in his top-boots, reaching to the knee, 
And his fresh uniform’s resplendent dye — 
My jaunty colonel of artillery!” 


If so, he did not display a very soldier-like spirit 
in leaving his spouse to brave all the dangers that 
beset robindom in brood-rearing time. © 

The mother bird had her hands full, so to speak. 
It taxed her energies to the utmost to keep the 
nestlings warm and supplied with food during the 
cold, raw days of early spring. In fact she had to 
be on the jump almost all the time. After bring- 
ing them what she regarded an ample meal of 
worms or insects, she would settle down comfort- 
ably on the nest for a little rest from her toil; but 
in a few minutes one of the children would set up 
a cry for more rations, and the faithful mother 
would dart off to the neighboring garden or field 
for a new supply. 

Knowing she had an irksome task before her, we 


decided to help her, by digging angle-worms in the 


170 BIRDS ABOUT THE HOUSE. 


garden and putting them in the alley beneath the 
nest. It was surprising how quickly she would 
espy them squirming about. She would at once 
make a plunge for them, and having seized oné in 
her bill, would beat it on the hard ground until it 
was dead, and then carry it to her nestlings. 
When the young birds had become well fledged, 
their cradle would scarcely hold them, and they 
jostled one another quite roughly. At last, one 
morning, when I stepped out of the door, I found 
that they had spread their wings and left the home 
of their childhood. On the ground I discovered 
one too weak yet to fly, and having caught him, 
lifted him to a limb out of the reach of prowling 
cats. 

When the birds had no further use for the nest, 
I took it down for examination. It was so firmly 
glued to the railing by the adhesive mortar used, 
that it required an effort to wrench it loose. Be- 
sides, it was tied quite skillfully with cord to the 
vines that creep about the balusters, the strings 
being held firmly in the solid clay near the rim of 
the nest. A substantial cup, lined with soft grass 
fibers, had been made of stiff mortar, into which 
and about which there was an inartistic fabric’ 


woven of various materials, grass and root fibers, 


BIRDS ABOUT THE HOUSE. Til 


three kinds of strings, strips of cloth used in tying 
up grapevines, shavings from a neighbor’s shop, a 
piece of cornstalk, a small quantity of cotton, bits 
of paper evidently from my study, straw, thread 
and horsehair. The bird certainly was a practical 
architect, and built her house for use and not for 
beauty. 

A sad tragedy occurred one day in the same 
spring. A boy’s kite having lodged on the roof 
of the house,a loop of the cord hung over the 
eaves, held firmly above at each end. Somehow'a 
robin got entangled in this cord, and was seen 
dangling by its neck and one foot, still struggling 
to get free. A ladder was quickly procured, while 
a member of the family rushed upstairs with a 
pole, hoping to break the cord through the window ; 
but the poor bird wrenched its foot loose before it 
could be reached, causing the string to tighten 
about its neck, and thus it was literally hung be- 
fore our eyes. Our neighbors and ourselves felt 
very sad over the tragedy, and the children sol- 
emnly buried the dead bird in the back yard. It 
seemed too bad that an innocent robin should have 
to be hung like a criminal. 

Besides the robins, I have been much interested 


in a pair of bluebirds which took a fancy to my 


Pe BIRDS ABOUT THE HOUSE. 


neighbor’s mail-box for a nesting-place. There is 
a sash in the door, through which the birds could 
see the spacious and pleasant room within — just 
the place for a house in which to live comfortably 
and rear a brood. But, much to thei surprise, 
every time they flew down, expecting to gain ad- 
mittance, that deceptive strip of glass intercepted 
them. Day after day they tried to solve the prob- 
lem of getting into the inclosure, but were foiled 
in all their efforts. Finally, at my request, my 
neighbor put up a box on a pole near by. We 
thought the birds would like that as well as their 
first choice ; but it was, I think, fully two weeks be- 
fore they deigned even to look at the substitute we 
had provided, and even after they had begun to build 
init, they often flew down tothe box which they had 
first selected, and tried to effect an entrance. ~ 

At last, however, the nest was complete, the 
egos laid, and in two weeks the young birds were 
hatched. Then another disaster occurred. A 
small boy took it into his head one day to frighten 
the parent birds by shaking the box, and actually 
kept on with his thoughtless sport until he had 
jarred every nestling to the ground. This was 
done in my absence, and when I came home one 
little bird was dead. With a good deal of effort I 


ee ve 


BIRDS ABOUT THE HOUSE. 173 


got the rest back into the nest, but I very much 
fear that not all of them survived the shock of 
their fall, for they were quite young at the time 
the misfortune occurred. 

My bluebirds were destined to meet with still 
more reverses. Some days later I noticed that 
they were engaged in a hot contest with the Eng- 
lish sparrows, but I did not at first suspect that 
the latter had any designs upon the home of the 
former. One day, however, the male bluebird 
stood on the board which formed the porch of his 
little house, chirping and flapping his wings in a 
very agitated way, while his mate sat on the ridge 
of the roof and seemed to be no less disturbed. 
The cause of the excitement was, as I soon dis- 
covered, that an English sparrow had at last suc- 
ceeded in forcing his way into the box and was 
doubtless playing havoc with the nest and contents. 
This was the beginning of the end. The bluebirds 
lost heart, gave up the contest and went elsewhere. 

Another incident occurred that summer which 
would have resulted tragically had it not been for 
the timely succor given the bird which met with 
the mishap. One day a member of the family was 
startled by a violent rapping and fluttering in the 
pipe of the sitting-room stove, which fortunately 


174 BIRDS ABOUT THE HOUSE. 


had no fire init. She called me at once, and I was 
downstairsina moment. The fluttering continued. 
I quickly drew the joints of the pipe apart, and 
found a young crow blackbird amid the soot on 
the damper, which was just below the elbow and 
which happened to be turned flat, so that it pre- 
vented the bird from falling into the stove. My 
hand grasped the poor thing. It was trembling 
from fright, and looked appealingly at me. I feared 
that it had been hurt, but when I went to the door 
and opened my hand, it darted away like an arrow 
over the roots of the houses to the adjacent grove. 
We laughed at the incident, and wondered 
whether Master Grakle had mistaken himself fora 
chimney swift. Perhaps he had seen a swift drop 
lightly into the dark orifice, and thought he could 
do the same. Experience might prove a dear 
school even for a blackbird. The adventurous 
youngster had descended the chimney through two 
stories and a half, and then had found the stove- 
pipe leading off from it, and had floundered along, 
turning two elbows, until his progress had been 
stopped by the damper. It is doubtful if he ever 
afterward passed through a darker passage, unless 
he had a special predilection for dusting out chim- 


neys and stove-pipes. 


THE CUCKOO AND HER NEST. 


“ Kook, kook, kook-kook-kook-kook !” 

Such is the far-away call that often comes from 
the woods in a kind of hollow, gurgling tone, 
almost any day in spring or summer. It is the 
song, if it can be called that, of the yellow-billed 
cuckoo, alias rain-crow, alias rain-dove, alias chow- 
chow. Owing to a certain perversity in human 
nature, the cuckoo is looked upon by many persons 
as a bird of ill-omen like the raven. And I see no 
reason why. If his quaint and somewhat plaintive 
call is really a prophecy of rain, it should be a wel- 
come sound fully as often as an unwelcome one, 
for what is more refreshing than the summer 
shower when the earth is parched with drought ? 

Perhaps I am so partial to the birds that my 
judgment is blinded, but I cannot bring myself to 
feel disdain for any creature that has pinions. I 
even feel a kind of undercurrent of admiration for 
that nuisance in feathers, the English sparrow, 


on account of his pluck and energy, his saucy, 
175 


176 THE CUCKOO AND HER NEST. 


bantam air, and the ingenuity he displays in find- 
ing food and shelter. We have worse citizens in > 
America (not in feathers) than this pert little for- 
eigner, although I am by no means his champion. 
Whimsical as it may seem, the cuckoo is one of 
my favorite birds, albeit he glides noiselessly and 
swings himself among the branches in a stealthy, 
serpent-like way that almost makes one’s flesh 
creep until one has grown_used to his manner. I 
remember that at first this furtive, uncanny habit 
made me think of the ghouls of which I had read, 
when a boy, in the Arabian Nights. But God has 
made him so, and why should you and I find fault ? 
During the summer of 1890 I had the pleasure 
of finding four nests of the cuckoo, the first I had 
ever seen. One day — the fifteenth of July it was 
—JI was loitering in the more open space at one 
end of the woods, when my eye caught a dark ob- 
ject lodged in the tops of a tangled clump of black- 
berry bushes. A closer inspection revealed a bird 
sitting in the cup of her nest, stretching up her 
slender neck and head and long, curved beak, while 
her dark eyes looked inquiringly at me. It was a 
yellow-billed cuckoo ; I saw that ata glance. Yes, 
it was a “ find,” one that made my pulses throb, for 


I had long been wanting to see a cuckoo’s domicile 


THE CUCKOO AND HER NEST. 417 


with my own eyes, instead of through the eyes of 
the authors I had been reading. 

At my approach the startled bird flew from her 
nest, but only after I had come quite near, and then 
she alighted in a sapling only a few feet away, ex- 
_ pressing her agitated feelings by a low, appealing 
“guook, quook. 

The nest was about four feet and a half from the 
ground and was built of crooked twigs and sticks, 
some of them quite thick, laid across one another 
and so interlaced as to make the structure firm and 
substantial. It was lined with a few dry leaves, 
strips of fibrous bark, and blossoms from the wild 
grape-vine. A little log cabin it was in the brier 
thicket. 

When I found it, it contained two eggs of a 
glaucous tint, unspotted. Four days later I again 
visited the spot. Two little bantlings lay on the 
soft, oval floor of the bird nursery and opened their 
mouths so wide that they looked like small carmine 
caves. ‘They were, without exception, the queerest 
looking and ugliest young birds I have ever seen ; 
as black as crows and sparsely decorated with long 
coarse bristles that looked stiff enough for the suoe 
maker's sewing. When they found, as they soon 
did, that I had brought no dinner for them, they 


/ 


178 _ THE CUCKOO AND HER NEST. 


snapped their mouths shut, cuddled together in the 
bottom of the nest and fell asleep. 

The mother was evidently sorely agitated, al- 
though she tried hard to appear calm. She sat 
quietly on a twig near at hand as long as she could, 
watching me with her dark, expanded eyes, occa- 
sionally giving vent to her distress by a low, gut- 
tural qguook, quook, and then, unable to bear the 
suspense longer, she flitted to another perch and 
another, feeling, no doubt, that movement would 
help her to overcome her perturbation. Poor 
thing! Not for the world would I have harmed 
her two infants, so beautiful in her eyes, so homely 
in mine. But where was that much-needed per- 
sonage, her husband? Oh, he (brave soldier) was 
skulking somewhere in the screening trees, helping 
his spouse to ward off her enemies, like the man 
who helped Betsy kill the bear. 

Other duties interfered with my making another 
call on my newly formed acquaintances for a week 
or more, and when I did return, the nestlings had 
spread their untried pinions and hied away. 

On the seventh of August I found another 
cuckoo’s nest in the densest seclusion of the woods, 
built in the fork of a sapling about seven feet from 


the ground. This nest was constructed of the 


THE CUCKOO AND HER NEST. ~ TQ 


same kind of materials as the one previously 
described, and cradled one egg and one callow 
youngster. It must be remembered that this bird 
has the quaint habit of beginning incubation as 
soon as an egg has been deposited, and for this 
reason young birds and comparatively fresh eggs 
are often found in the same nest. In this case the 
mother bird was sorely distressed, uttering her 
agitated guttural call and pecking nervously at 
her feathers to give vent to her overwrought feel- 
ings. I fancied I could almost hear her heart 
pounding against her soiled bosom. 

I resolved to watch this sylvan homestead until 
the nestlings had grown and left it. So I carefully 
took the bearings of the place, and was sure I could 
readily find it again by means of a pile of rails near 
the green, meandering lane, serving as a guide-post. 
But, would you believe it? When I went to the 
woods the next evening I could not find that nest 
anywhere, although I beat about until dark and 
peered into every sapling within ten rods of what 
I thought was the site. Day after day I sought 
for it, but in vain. Were the woods bewitched, or 
was it the nest, or was it myself? At all events, I 
failed to watch the development of those homely 


bantlings in cuckoo wisdom and beauty. 


180 THE CUCKOO AND HER NEST. 


Well, now for the sequel. One day, a month or 
two later, while threading my way through the 
woods, presto! I stumbled upon the nest, now 
deserted and lone, that*had so long eluded my 
quest. Ignoramus that I was, I had mistaken the 
locality, and had been looking along the wrong 
lane all the while; and yet I had been pluming 
myself on my familiarity with every nook and 
niche of that woodland! Verily, “a haughty 
spirit goeth before a fall,” and “he that exalteth 
himself shall be abashed.” 

Another cuckoo built her residence about twenty 
feet from the ground on the out-stretching limb of 
a half-grown tree near the cliffs of a loitering 
brook. The fourth of this nest quartette I found 
on the eleventh of August. It was lodged on the 
horizontal branch of a small oak-tree. The branch 
extended out over a path that wound through the 
grove, and along which a number of shopmen 
passed every morning and evening to and from 
their work. Here the gentle bird sat upon her 
nest, hatched her eggs and reared her brood, undis- 
turbed by the pedestrians who pursued the path- 
way beneath her cottage. 

That engaging writer, Bradford Torrey, has de- 


scribed in his unique style the behavior of a birt 


THE CUCKOO AND HER NEST. 1&1 


which, as he quaintly phrases it, “* pumps without 
water.” The like may be said of the cuckoo, whose 
notes sound decidedly like the noise made by a 
suction pump that needs priming. Sometimes 
they are low and soft, at other times quite loud 
and startling. ‘The notes seem to be produced far 
down in the throat, which can be seen dilating and 
contracting rapidly as the bird utters his call. 
Although it is not a musical sound, I love to hear 
it, and can heartily endorse the opening lines of 
Wordsworth’s ode, written as a tribute to our bird’s 
British cousin: 


‘*O blithe new-comer! I have heard, 
I hear thee and rejoice; 

O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird, 
Or but a wandering voice?” 


As to this bird’s habit of stealing her eggs into 
the nests of other birds and allowing them to raise 
her children for her, I will say nothing. Far be it 
from me to speak of the objectionable traits of any 
bird’s character. 


A WOODLAND COASTER. 


ONE of the quaintest little birds of the woods is 
the brown creeper. He is as full of whims as a 
fickle schoolgirl, so that it is always difficult to 
predict what he will do next. I have called him a 
coaster, for he spends most of his time sliding on 
the trunks of trees and saplings, the difference be- 
tween him and human coasters being that he always 
goes up-hill instead of down. Even the wood- 
peckers and nuthatches sometimes perch on a limb 
or twig, but it would be heterodox for a brown 
creeper todo so. With him it is creep, creep, creep 
all day long. 

You may know him by his white or whitish vest 
and his brown coat, barred with dusky, white and 
tawny. His body is rather flat, as is the case with 
all birds that creep. He seems to be very warmly 
clad in his modest suit of brown; and he needs 
thick clothing, for he winters in this latitude, and 
early in the spring hies away to the far North. 

It is a rare pleasure to watch him creeping by 

182 


A WOODLAND COASTER. 183 


short, quick jerks up the trees and branches, turn- 
ing his head from side to side, as he peers into the 
crannies of the bark for the delicacies he relishes. 
On pleasant October days, when Indian summer 
reigns in the woods, I have often thrown myself 
flat on the leaf-carpeted ground and lazily, but ad- 
miringly, watched his antics. Beginning near the 
roots of a tree, he glides up and up, or slips around 
and around until he has reached the height he de- 
sires, and then — well, how do you suppose he 
descends to a lower perch? When the wood- 
peckers want to descend, they slide down back- 
ward ; the nuthatches and creeping warblers race 
down head foremost, as easily and gracefully as 
the fly moves on a window-pane; but the brown 
creeper performs the feat in his own way, for he is 
an original little genius. Having reached the upper 
branches, he hurls himself out through the air in a 
sweeping, downward curve, and alights near the 
base of the same or another tree, when he again 
begins his upward march. Sometimes, however, 
when the distance is short, he will glide down side- 
wise, or with his body at an oblique angle with the 
tree-bole, but he never descends head downward. 
He no doubt thinks that would be an inelegant 
performance, 


184 A WOODLAND COASTER. 


Like most of his companions in plumes, our 
creeper is quite an athlete. When he flings him- 
self from his lofty perch near the tree-top, it seems 
as if he had been discharged from a gun, so swift 
is his flight. The eye catches only a flash of brown 
and white, and must be exceedingly swift and alert 
to follow him to the trunk he aims at for a target. ; 
How recklessly he flings himself! One wonders 
whether he really does take aim, or merely makes 
_a blind dash toward the ground, alighting wherever 
he happens to strike. And then he pelts a tree 
with such force one cannot help wondering that 
he does not dash himself to pieces by the concus- 
sion. Still, I do not worry about him, for I long’ 
ago came to the conclusion that Master, or Mister 
(perhaps Miss or Mistress) Brown Creeper under- 
stands his (or her) business fully as well as I do 
mine, if not better. 

As you thread your way through the tangle- 
wood, you will often hear the alarm-call of the 
creeper long before you see his form outlined 
against a tree-trunk. This call is a fine, tremu- 
lous, half-plaintive note, and may be represented 
thus, ‘“ Z-e-e-e-m, 2-e-e-e-m!” When he darts to 
another perch, he frequently announces that fact 
by a quick, nervous little call, as if he had been 


A WOODLAND COASTER. 185 


frightened away. It is quite difficult to distin- 
guish his alarm-call from that of the golden-crowned 
kinglet. I may be in error, but it seems to me the 
-kinglet omits the m in his call; that is, he says 
g-e-e-e instead of 2-e-e-e-m. 

In this latitude the creeper seldom displays his 
musical powers. Still, I have heard him warble a 
feeble little lay or whisper-song in the spring; but 
in his breeding haunts in the North it is said that 
his songs are sometimes “ loud, powerful and sur- 
passingly sweet,” and at other times “ more feeble 
and plaintive.” These more elaborate vocal efforts, 
I am sorry to say, I have never had the good for- 
tune to hear. 

Mr. William Brewster, who has written so much 
on the birds of North America, has given an inter- 
esting account of the creeper’s nesting and breeding 
habits in the western part of Maine. In every in- 
stance, he says, the nest was placed behind the 
partly-loosened bark of a balsam fir, although 
spruce, birch and elm stubs were more numerous. 
“ Within the loose seale of bark,” he continues, 
“was crammed a mass of twigs and other rubbish ; 
upon this was placed the finer bark of various 
trees, with an intermixture of a little wsnea moss 


and a number of spiders’ cocoons.” From five to 


186 A WOODLAND COASTER. 


eight eggs are found in each nest. The ground 
color of the eg@s is white ur creamy-white, speckled 
with reddish-brown, chiefly around the larger end, 
often in the form of a wreath. 

During the past winter (1890-91) the creeper 
has been one of the most cheerful companions of 
my loiterings in the woods. When the wind blew 
in biting gusts from the west, he found a warm 
and sheltered creeping-place on the eastern sides 
of the tree-trunks. Sometimes, however, when the 
wind caught his plumage at the right angle, and 
lifted his feathers, he looked like a little tatterde- 
malion as he slipped up his arboreal wall. One 
cannot help rejoicing at the advent of spring, be- 
cause it brings so many birds back to their old 
haunts; but I am always loath to bid adieu to my 
delightful little friend of the mottled garb, for at 
that season he takes ‘his leave for more northern 
latitudes, 


fe. 


A DAINTY WARBLER. 


IT was one of those perfect days of early spring, 
when the unflecked sky was a shining vault, and 
the air was as soft and balmy as a lover of out-door 
hfe could wish. I was driving with a friend along 
a pleasant country road which pursued the banks of 
a broad river. Suddenly I drew rein and brought 
the carriage to a halt. I had caught sight of a 
dainty little bird hopping about on the greensward 
of an old orchard, and I felt sure it must be a new 
specimen; one I had never seen before. With 
beating pulses I flung the lines to my companion, 
leaped from the carriage, and vaulted at a bound 
over the rail fence. (A bird student, by the way, 
soon becomes quite spry and athletic, however 
awkward he may be naturally.) 

In a moment I had the bird in the field of my 
opera glass, and then exclaimed, with what delight 
you may imagine: “The myrtle warbler!” It 
was a bird for which I had been on the alert for a 


long time. I knew him at once, because I had 
187 


188 : A DAINTY WARBLER. 


caught the gleam of his rich, yellow croavn and 
rump — markings by which he may always be rec- 
ognized in the spring. It was a moment of rare 
delight, as such moments always are to a lover of 
the birds. How beautiful he was! What an elab- 
orate toilet he had made! And how proudly he 
stood craning up his neck and eying me as I drew 
near! He was more beautiful than any nymph 
that the ancient Greeks ever imagined. 

In addition to the yellow of the rump and crown, 
there was a patch of gold on each side of his chest, 
giving him a knightly aspect. The rest of his 
lower parts were pure white, broadly striped on 
the breast and sides with black; his upper parts 
were Slaty blue or bluish gray, becoming black on 
the sides of the head, except the white line above 
the eye; his back was streaked with black, and 
there were white markings on his wings and 
tail. 

The specimen before me was a male, for his little 
spouse, wherever she was, would not have been 
clad so gorgeously, although she would have worn 
the same pattern as her brilliant lord. It is not 
considered “ good form,” I suppose, in bird social 
circles, for the little ladies to array themselves as 
gaudily as their husbands and lovers do. This, as 


A DAINTY WARBLER. 189 


you know, is quite the reverse of the fashion in 
vogue among folks. 

Not only does history repeat itself, as the old, 
threadbare adage runs, but ornithological experi- 
ences do the same. If you meet a bird once, no 
matter how long you may have been looking for 
him in vain, you are sure to meet him again, and 
perhaps very frequently. Such has been my expe- 
rience with the yellow-rumped warbler, as this bird 
is often called. Every spring and autumn since 
my introduction to him long ago, I have had the 
pleasure of studying him and improving his ac- 
quaintance. Indeed, he has become one of my 
most familiar friends. 

What a delightful day was the twenty-eighth of 

April, 1890, when for an hour I watched four of 
these attractive birds flitting about in the saplings 
at the border of a woodland, and threading the 
bare branches with their brilliant hues. They 
seemed almost like living jewels tilting gracefully 
on the twigs, if one can imagine such a thing. 
My notes say that the black of their chests was 
divided into two lobes by the immaculate white 
“choker” extending down from the throat. 

This warbler quartette was beautiful to look 


upon, not only on account of the luster of their 


2, alia A DAINTY WARBLER. 


plumage, but also on account of the light, airy 
grace with which they flitted about in the trees. 
A luckless insect came buzzing by, when one of 
the birds espied it and pounced upon it with a cer- 
tainty of aim that seldom misses the mark, caught 
it deftly on the wing, and then whirled back to a 
perch to make a meal of it. I noticed a number 
of similar performances, and could hear the quick 
snapping of the birds’ mandibles as they darted 
swiftly after their victims. 

And then these birds favored me with music — 
a little concert all their own. ‘To be frank, I have 
listened to better bird minstrelsy, but as it was the 
first time I had ever heard the vocal performances 
of the myrtle warblers, I was in an appreciative 
mood. Their lays were very fine, twittering war- 
bles, or whisper-songs—one might almost say 
gossamer songs — considerably prolonged and 
quite varied, somewhat like the twittering mid- 
summer ditty of the black-capped chickadee. This 
was the only song I have ever heard from the 
throats of these minstrels. However, Bradford 
Torrey heard a myrtle warbler singing a most ex- 
quisite song while descending Mount Willard one 
day in June, proving that our bird has more than 


one tune in his musical repertory. It was my 


Hy f 
~~ 


A DAINTY WARBLER. 191 


good fortune to hear a myrtle warbler’s song on 
the twentieth of October. It was quite vigorous 
and cheerful, but a little hoarse and wheezy, and 
lacked the liquid quality of his spring song. 

Many were the chases the myrtle warbler led me 
in the autumn, tarough the clover fields and across 
the boggy marshes, before I had learned to know 
him in his fall suit, which is so different from the 
gorgeous apparel he wears in the spring. Why he 
changes his toilet I do not know, unless it is to 
confuse us bird students, and that would not be 
very kind. Here he is on this October day with a 
dress of umber-brown, paler below, while his breast 
and sides are obscurely streaked with dusk. And 
then here are the young birds, which are dressed 
in still another suit, thickly streaked both above 
and below with dusk and gray, and having no 
yellow except on the rump. 

This bird is more hardy than most of his kins- 
men of the same family, for he often remains here 
until the last of October and the first of November, 
and sometimes does not leave for his winter home 
in the South until snow falls, which is long after 
all other warblers have gone; and then in the 
spring he is frequently back again by the fourth of 


March. He has other quaint ways, for while he 


192 A DAINTY WARBLER. 


breeds mostly north of this latitude, he has been 
known to breed as far south as Jamaica. W hat 
his next whim will be it is impossible to predict. 

It would not be difficult to pursue the study 
of ornithology, if all birds were as fearless and 
familiar as the yellow-rumped warbler. In the 
spring he usually remains in more out-of-the-way 
places, but in the autumn he comes to the suburbs 
of the city, and seems to be quite sociable. At 
this very moment, as I sit at my desk looking 
out of my study window — it is the sixteenth of 
October, and a raw, wet day — I see a bevy of these 
warblers fluttering about in the maples before the 
house, in company with the bluebirds and chipping 
sparrows, with which they seem to be on fnendly 
_ terms. As they spread their wings and dart across 
the street, their yellow rumps flash lke tiny bars 
of gold. | 

How often, as I walk along the streets on autumn 
days, I hear their hoarse little Chep, chep, chep! in 
the trees above me, as if the frosty nights and 
damp weather had given them a cold, which has 
settled in their throats. I cannot help stopping 
to ogle them, even at the risk of being lauglred at 
by passers-by, who almost invariably stop to ogle 
me in turn, thinking perhaps that I have gone daft. 


A DAINTY WARBLER. 193 


Or probably they suspect that I have found a roll 
of bank-notes somewhere in the trees. But no; 
I have discovered a myrtle warbler, and that 
is of far more consequence. To study one of 
these dainty creatures, made so beautiful by 
the Creator, is, I take it, a mark of sound 
sense rather than an indication of a weak mind; 
although I hope there is nothing boastful in that 


reflection. 


A DECEMBER DAY WITH THE BIRDS. 


THE winter of 1889-90 was extremely mild in 
the latitude of Central Ohio, where most of my ob- 
servations have been made. By some delightful 
blunder nature had apparently thrust summer into 
the lap of winter. Or had winter fallen asleep and 
gone to dreaming of June? On those clear, balmy 
days, when the sky was an unflecked dome, I found 
it impossible to remain in my study; my thoughts 
would “ brook no ceiling narrower than the blue ;” 
and so I often sauntered to a favorite woodland, to 
watch the deportment of my “friends in plumes.” 
One of these days, the eleventh of December, 
dwells pleasantly in my memory; and [I shall try 
to describe it. For the sake of vividness I shall 
use the present tense. 

Standing beneath the tall, bare trees, and breath- 
ing in that peculiar woodsy atmosphere that per- 
vades the place, I am delighted with the antics of 
the little snowbirds, which have been the constant 
companions of my winter loiterings. Here they 

194 


A DECEMBER DAY WITH THE BIRDS. 190 


are, dancing about on the ground, scratching up 
the leaves in quest of seeds, or else scudding 
among the bushes, displaying their white lateral 
tail feathers whenever they take wing. Their 
toilets of plain brown and white give them a com- 
fortable appearance, as if they were dressed for 
warmth and not for show; while their beaks look 
like small white pyramids attached to the fore part 
of their cunning little heads. How dexterous 
these birds are on the wing! Sometimes they 
hurl themselves in their swift, reckless flight so 
near me that it is only by a deft, timely turn that 
they miss my head. I have dodged more than 
once to avoid being struck by them, when they 
made a dash at me as if they had been shot from a 
catapult. Really, my dear junco, I prefer not to 
be the second party to such a collision, as I am not 
quite sure of its effect upon my rather sensitivescalp. 

All winter long these companionable birds have 
driven loneliness from the woods by their rapid, 
tremulous chirping; and sometimes, toward spring, 
they break into a tuneless ditty, which answers the 
purpose of woodland music very well before the 
brown thrushes and white-throated sparrows arrive 
from the South. 

Threading my way deeper into the woods, I espy 


196 A DECEMBER DAY WITH THE BIRDS. 


two pleasant little friends in feathers, which have 
been leal to me during all the winter months; I 
refer to the tufted and black-capped chickadees or 
titmice. Of the former I have spoken at some 
length in another paper, and so will only allude 
to him here in comparison with his ebon-crested 
relative. He is quite a malapert, with his jaunty, 
cone-shaped crest pointing straight up. He ex- 
presses his sentiments in such a variety of ways 
that one can never be sure when one has heard all 
the notes in his vocal repertory. The two titmice 
have many traits in common, but the black-capped 
is cast in a finer mould; he is more dainty, de- 
mure and supple (and that is saying a great deal) 
than his tufted cousin, while his chick-chick-a-dee- 
dee-dee is less vociferous and evidently more sincere 
and expressive of real feeling. 

I dislike to -make the accusation — for I would 
not cast a stigma on the good name of even a bird 
— but I am afraid that the tufted titmouse’s alarm- 
calls are often more or less affected; he is not half 
as much frightened at you as he pretends to be. 
All that ado in the sapling yonder is put on to 
attract your attention to his skill as a tilter; for, if 
you stand still and watch him, he begins to perform 


some of his most daring exploits. 


A DECEMBER DAY WITH THE BIRDS.’ 197 


It would be difficult, however, to speak in too 
laudatory a strain of that feathered sprite, the 
black-capped chickadee. What a perfect little 
gentleman he is, any way, even when he hangs 
head-downward from a twig, or turns a somersault 
in pursuit of an insect! How neat and winsome 
he looks with his black cap and necktie! Here he 
is before me now, flitting about in a brush-heap, 
pecking here and pecking there, peeping here and 
peeping there,-until at last he leisurely draws the 
larva of an insect, white and fuzzy, from its nest 
beneath the bark of a limb, and then, after several 
attempts, swallows it, looking up at me with a 
courteous little nod, as much as to say: “ It was 
good, sir; I should have been glad to share it with 
you, if I hadn’t been so hungry myself!” Of 
course I reply with equal urbanity: “ Thank you, 
Master Tomtit; you are quite welcome to all of 
it; I’m not in the least insectivorous in my tastes.” 
I will not be outdone in good manners by a chick- 
adee, no, indeed! 

Then he makes a sudden plunge to a sapling 
close at hand, and alights “ head downward, cling- 
ing to a spray,’ aS Emerson says, and calls chi ck- 
chick-a-dee-dee, with a chuckle of exultation. He 
is such a dear little elf, so brave and so ingenu- 


198 A DECEMBER DAY WITH THE BIRDS. 


ous withal, that I feel disposed to join the poet in 
his lines : — 


‘¢ Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine; 
Ashes and jet.all hues outshine. 

Why are not diamonds black and gray, 
To ape thy dare-devil array?” 


Yet I must protest that the adjective “ dare-devil”’ 
in the last line is not well chosen, even though 
Emerson be the poet. 

Another winter resident of my woodland is the 
tree sparrow, which arrives in the autumn and re- 
mains until the latter part of April, when he 
departs for his summer resorts in Labrador and 
the regions about Hudson’s Bay. The tree spar- 
rows go in more or less compact flocks from one 
part of the woods to another like winged nomads, 
wherever their quest for food takes them. They 
feed from the ground and on the weeds in the 
neighboring fields and the dogwood berries that 
are so plentiful. Flitting about in the tanglewood, 
a covey of them often keep up a constant racket 
like the English sparrows, although their calls are’ 
pleasant and cheerful, and not disagreeable like 
those of the Britishers. These birds sing a sweet 
ditty in the spring before they leave, as a kind of 


A DECEMBER DAY WITH THE BIRDS. 199 


farewell hymn to the scenes that have become so 
dear to them. I had the good fortune to hear one 
of these low, sweet songs on the nineteenth of De- 
cember, the only time [ ever heard the tree sparrow 
sing,* and I have felt grateful to the obliging little 
minstrel ever since. 

Continuing my stroll through the dim arcades, 
I am suddenly brought to a standstill; there comes 
to my ear from the remote sylvan depths one of 
the sweetest, saddest, most haunting bird notes of 
the wildwood —the minor whistle of the black- 
capped chickadee. Hear it as it pierces the soli- 
tude with javelins of sweetness: Ph-e-e-e, ph-e-e-t ; 
p-h-e-e-e, ph-e-e-e-t ! with a peculiar wavering in- 
tonation that defies the alphabet, and that must 
be heard to be appreciated. ‘There is, moreover, 
a dulcet swing toward the close of the second 
syllable, which I cannot catch by any combination 
of letters, although I have often tried to do so. 

How shall one characterize those haunting notes? 
They are a musical wail, a threnody of sweetness 
—TI had almost said, the strain of a sentient lyre 
whose heart-strings have been broken by the stress 


* This was true at the time it was written; but a year later in the same 
month I heard the enchanting lay of a tree sparrow, while on a delightful day 
of February I surprised a large covey of these sparrows giving a unique 
eoncert, which was beautiful indeed. Strange to say I did not hear a <ingle 
tree-sparrow song afterthat day. These birds are evidently erratic songsters. 


200 <A DECEMBER DAY WITH THE BIRDS. 


of some sorrow. One cannot help thinking of a 
wandering dryad seeking her lost love. The song 
recalls all the sad romances one has ever read, and 
perhaps several in which one was, one’s self, the 
chief actor as well as the chief sufferer. 

Those plaintive minor notes still lingering in 
my ears, I seek another part of the woods, beguil- 
ing the time as I saunter, by watching the gambols 
of the nuthatches as they go tobogganing up and 
down the trunks of the trees. It is surprising how 
many old friends I meet here. Presently I pull 
myself through the tangle of bushes, and find a 
seat on a half-decayed log in a somewhat open 
space, shut in on all sides by the thicket. The 
sunshine filters through the branches above me, 
making a fiigree of light and shade on the leaf- 
strewn ground. My feathered companions become 
ereatly excited over my presence; apparently they 
have never before seen a man sitting on a log in 
the woods, and are dumfounded. What a birds’ 
drama is enacted before me! 

First, the juncos, as the snowbirds are often 
called, dart into my retreat, and scurry around 
nervously, looking up at me with a bewilderment 
that cannot be expressed. <A half-dozen tree spar- 
rows alight in the bushes only a few yards away, 


Ay e 
A DECEMBER DAY WITH THE BIRDS. 201 


and eying me suspiciously, seem to ask, “ What do 
you mean, sir, sitting here onalog?” The crested 
titmice and white-bellied nuthatches are quite up- 
set, not knowing what to think of the spectacle 
before them. Two blue jays flurry about, and re- 
sent my presence with loud objurgations. <A hairy 
woodpecker utters his demur in a shrill ch--r-r, and 
even the bluebirds sigh for sheer amazement. At- 
tracted by the unusual commotion, a bevy of gold- 
finches sweep across the adjacent corn-field, looping 
the air with undulatory flight, and, alighting in the 
trees above me, exclaim, Pe-chick-o-pee ! pe-chick- 
o-pee ' in a tumult of wonder that cannot be other- 
wise expressed. A pair of cardinal grossbeaks in 
brilliant plumage dash up, and chip their protest _ 
in unequivocal accents; while, as if to make a cli- 
max, a Carolina wren hops about on the leaves, 
flirts his tail with an emphasis not to be mistaken, 
_ and scolds as only a wren can. 

I must have presented a strange spectacle to my 
feathered spectators; perhaps they took me fora 
one-animal menagerie (I am not prepared to dis-, 
pute their conclusion if they did), for all of them, 
as soon as they espied me, seemed to cry out: 
“Tsn’t it wonderful, wonderful, to see a man sitting 
on a log right here in the woods? How can he do 


< ® 
202 A DECEMBER DAY WITH THE BIRDS. 


it? how can he doit?” I could not refrain from 
laughing aloud at the hubbub I had created; and 
this outburst of merriment seemed to reassure the 
birds somewhat, convincing them, I suppose, that 
I was human and harmless, after all. They soon 
quieted down and betook themselves to their ban- 
quet of buds, berries and insects, proving that 
there is a soothing power in a hearty peal of 
laughter. As other work demanded my attention, 
I hurried homeward, glad that I had been able to 
afford my woodland friends some innocent diver- 
sion, and thus add a little of the spice of life to 
_ their existence to keep it from becoming humdrum. 


THE WOODS IN ERMINE. 


“JT is one of God’s beautiful thoughts !” 

Such was the exclamation that broke from my 
lips as I stood at the border of my favorite 
rambling-ground one winter day. The scene be- 
fore me was more than lovely; it was sublime. 
The woods were clad in ermine, every branch and 
twig and spray bearing a gleaming cylinder of 
snow. Had the sun shone, the spectacle would 
have been resplendent with prismatic colors; but 
as it was, the dim forest light was soft and sub- 
dued, as if some gentle spirit were brooding over 
the woodland. It was a scene that would have in- 
spired Lowell himself, who doubtless would have 
described it in verse : 


** Every pine and fir and hemlock 
W ore ermine too dear for an earl, 
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree 
Was ridged inch deep with pearl.” 


The thick network of branching bushes and sap- 
203 


PAL THE WOODS IN ERMINE. 


lings was duplicated in porcelain, from which the 
tall trees lifted their brown trunks as if they had 
sprung out of a sea of Parian marble. It seemed 
almost like an absolution to plunge into that ocean 
of whiteness. As I stood in those wooded aisles, 
I felt that the place was indeed a Bethel, a natural 
temple where one might kneel and worship, scarcely 
needing any other chrism than that of the softly 
filtering snow. 

Sometimes, by bending low, I could creep into 
a secluded boudoir beneath the bushes, where I 
stood completely engirded and over-arched by a 
filigree of crystal shafts. At some places the 
bushes bent low beneath their burdens, and one 
sapling had broken down entirely, and lay across 
my pathway, held to the ground in the embrace ot 
the snow. In one place the wood-road I was pur- 
suing was completely closed up by the interlock-. 
ing branches on either side, so that I had to turn 
out of my way and creep around the crystalline 
obstruction. A slender sapling, that had not cast 
off its last summer’s suit of leaves, was bending 
over until its top almost touched the ground, 
making a graceful arch of white and brown. 
Every tree and bush was, in fact, a vision of 


loveliness. I stood beneath a low but widely- 


THE WOODS IN ERMINE. 205 


spreading dogwood sapling, with its thick mesh 
of branches and twigs, each curve and angle fol- 
lowed by its companion ridge of crystals, and the 
longer I studied the picture the more I was chained 
to the spot. Yes, it was one of God’s beautiful 
thoughts, wrought out in snow and stem. 

Although silent and snow-clad, the woods were 
not tenantless; no, indeed; and it would have 
been quite out of keeping with a_bird-lover’s 
nature to take such a ramble through the woods 
without noticing his plumed companions. Have 
I not for years held most delightful converse with 
the birds of this place, until each feathered denizen 
has become a familiar friend ? 

Before reaching the woods I was saluted by a 
bevy of tree sparrows hopping about on the rail 
fence of the lane. How cunning they were! It 
would seem, almost, that snow is their native ele- 
ment. They do not avoid it, as most other birds 
do, but seem to revel in it. When I flushed them 
they darted to the top rails, plunging fearlessly 
into the downy snow up to their little bodies, and 
standing there with up-stretched necks looking at 
the queer pedestrian stalking along in his tall 
rubber boots. Did not their dainty feet get 
cold? When [ inquired about this from one of 


206 THE WOODS IN ERMINE. 


them standing on the end of a rail where the snow 
had been blown away, he replied, in pantomime if 
not in word: “If one foot gets chilled I draw it 
up into the feathery pocket of my bosom and warm 
it, like this,” and he accompanied the explanation 
by the action. 

Stepping up to the fence and looking down 
among the weeds, I could see the dainty paths 
of these birds winding about in the snow. What 
hardy creatures they must be to make the cold 
snow their tramping ground! But nature, their 
loving mother, has seen to it, I suppose, that these 
winter residents are supplied with plenty of warm 
blood for the cold and stormy weather. How 
rhythmically Sir Edwin Arnold, in his poem, 
“The Light of the World,” has described our 
Heavenly Father’s care for the feathered tribes ! 


_ ‘He told us not one bird 
Folds failing wings, and shuts bright eyes to die, 
But That which gave their stations to the stars, 
And marked the Seas their limits, and the Sun 
His shining road, signed soft decree for this, 


And did in pity plan kind consequence.” 


In the deep seclusion of the woods I found the 
tree sparrows holding a convocation in the tree- 


tops over some important matter, in company with 


THE WOODS IN ERMINE. 207 


their relatives, the little snowbirds, which also de- 
light in the snow. One of the snowbirds, over- 
come by curiosity, darted down into the bushes. 
where I stood. He hopped about fearlessly upon 
the snow-covered twigs, as if he did not know they 
were cold. So happy were several of these snow- 
birds that they almost broke into song as they pur- 
sued one another about in the tree-tops. This was 
all the more remarkable because they had not sung 
at all during the pleasant weather that we had had 
earlier in the season. 

White-breasted nuthatches were tobogganing up 
and down the tree-trunks, and several downy wood- 
peckers were drilling into the crevices of the bark 
for their afternoon lunch. But where were the 
crested titmice? I beat about the entire haunt and 
sought for them in all the “ woodland privacies,” 
but not a titmouse was to be seen. For several 
years I have prowled about in these woods, winter 
and summer, rain and shine, but never before had 
I failed to find these sociable birds at my elbow. 
It was queer. In December, when the weather 
was much colder than now, and the snow lay 
deeper on the ground, though it did not cling to 
the branches, I had found them here as cheery as 
birds could be.- Only one way of explaining their 


208 THE WOODS IN ERMINE. 


absence occurs to me. ‘They are not fond of wad- 
ing in snow, as the tree sparrows and juncos are, 
and yet they are perching birds; and so, when they | 
saw, on the previous day, that every branch and . 
twig would be robed in snow, they took to wing 
and went elsewhere. The golden-crowned king- 
lets and the goldfinches followed their example. 
The nuthatches and woodpeckers remained, be- 
cause they could find plenty of bare roving ground 
on the eastern side of the tree-trunks. 

During my midwinter tramp I witnessed one 
little bird-drama that I cannot forbear describing. 
I had stepped out of the woods into a swampy field 
which skirts it. Presently I heard the friendly 
call of a nuthatch in an oak-tree on the slope, and 
decided to look up my little interlocutor. As I 
approached the tree he called a halt, as if he meant 
to say, “ Do not come so close as to disturb me; I 
am eating my dinner.” As I stopped within a rod 
or so of the tree and looked up, I saw him clinging 
head-downward to the trunk, thrusting his long, 
slender beak into a cranny of the bark. 

At first he was a little disconcerted by my pres- 
ence, and did not know whether he should fly or 
not. He concluded to stay, however, although he 


could not work very steadily for a few moments, 


THE WOODS IN ERMINE. 209 


for looking at me; but at length he was convinced, 
I suppose, that I was only a harmless bird-gazer, 
and so he set to work in good earnest, and soon 
became so absorbed that he paid no heed to his in- 
tensely interested spectator. ‘There was a worm 
or larva imbedded in that cranny. How he did 
labor to secure it! He pecked and drilled and 
pried and thrust in his bill until I feared he would 
break it off. 

But his efforts were at last rewarded. A _ pas- 
sage was opened into the insect’s winter hiding- 
place, and the bird drew him out piece-meal, for he 
would not yield to the sacrifice of himself in any 
other way. I could see the white fragments linger 
a moment between the nuthatch’s mandibles, and 
then they glanced down his throat in a twinkle. 
One refractory piece slipped from his bill and 
would have fallen to the ground, but, quick as a 
flash, he sprang after and secured it before it had 
descended a half-foot. I do not know how long 
it took him to “finish” that poor worm; but at 
last it had all been stowed away in his stomach, 
and he flew off saying, “ Henk-a, henk-a, ha-a, ha-a, 
ha-a!” Thus ended the comedy of the bird and 
tragedy of the worm. 


A MIDWINTER WALK. 
[THREE DAYS LATER. ] 


THE alert student of nature finds her versatile 
in her resources of surprise. On the fourteenth of 
January, 1891, three days after the tramp described 
in the last chapter, I met with several interesting 
experiences which prove this. Comfortably clad 
and shod with tall rubber boots, I trudged off 
through the melting snow. To my surprise I 
found the tufted titmice, which, it will be remem- 
bered, were not to be seen anywhere on my previ- 
ous visit to this place, when the woods were clad 
in ermine. They were as gay and agile as ever, 
and almost broke into song. 

My theory of their absence on the twelfth has 
been hinted at, but in the light of later discoveries, 
I wish to repeat it and confirm it more fully. These 
birds are no snow-waders like the juncos and tree 
sparrows — not they! They prefer a bare twig to 
perch on. Those birds that want to plod through 
banks of icy crystals may do so, but as for the 

210 


A MIDWINTER WALK. mat 


chickadees, they would beg to be excused. And 
so, when they foresaw the nature of the storm on 
the previous day, their instinct taught them that 
their perches would be covered with snow, and 
they, therefore, took wing for a more southern lat- 
itude, where the climate was more congenial to 
chickadee life. It was probably not necessary for 
them to make an aérial voyage of more than fifty 
or a hundred miles to escape the storm, or, at least, 
the more disagreeable part of it. Some one may 
suggest that they had only hidden themselves in 
some cosy shelter, and for that reason I did not 
find them. No, indeed! Nothing could be more 
unlikely. That would have been out of all keep- 
ing with chickadee activity. A titmouse never 
keeps quiet. A more voluble little bird does not 
infest the woods. 

The next day was cold and windy, but during 
the night the weather moderated, and when morn- 
ing came the sun shone warm and bright. ‘Thus 
the branches of the trees and saplings were mostly . 
divested of their snowy wardrobe, and again held 
out convenient perches for the birds to tilt on. 
Had they come back so soon from their journey 
to parts unknown? That is my hypothesis, at 
least, and I give it only for what it is worth as a 


y Ae A MIDWINTER WALK. 


theory. They acted, too, as if they had been away 
from home and were glad to get back to the old 
place ; for I never saw them more pert and cheer- 
ful. Why, they almost broke into song, and treated 
me to three or four variations obviously to display 
their vocal resources. 

Another surprise awaited me in a more distant 
part of the woods. At my first visit I had also 
missed my little winter friend, the golden-crowned 
kinglet, but to-day he suddenly glanced into sight 
by the side of the wood-road I was pursuing, his 
amber crownpiece, with its ruby set in the center, 
gleaming in the sunlight. He behaved more like 
a nuthatch ora creeping warbler than a kinglet. 
He flew to the stems of the saplings and clung to 
them and even climbed them, and then actually 
darted to the trunk of a large oak-tree and as- 
cended that a foot or two. Never had I seen 
Master Golden-Crown deport himself in this way. 
Presto! he dashed to the ground and hopped 
nimbly about in the deep snow, picking up here 
and there a delicacy that he seemed to relish. 
Who would not love this flitting jewel of the 
wild-wood ? 

Again I found the tree sparrows at the border 
of the woods, for, as a rule, they disdain’ shelter 


A MIDWINTER WALK. 213 


even in the stormiest weather. How they love to 
wade in the snow! As before, J could trace their 
tracks among the weeds and briers, the prints of 
their tiny feet looking as dainty as the footprints 
of fairies. — 

A bird lover may be a kind of monomauniac, 
and may see beauty where others see only the 
most commonplace occurrences; many persons 
may eyen laugh condescendingly at some of his 
raptures; but however that may be, I stood in 
spell-bound admiration looking down at that intri- 
cate network of tiny tracks in the snow. So do 
our life-paths wind and intertwine. Are they so 
beautiful ? I wonder. 

At one place I traced a number of converging 
pathways to a little nook on the ground arched 
over with snow and a small, brambly bush, and 
having a floor of brown leaves. It was a snug 
little snow-house, and had the appearance of havy- 
‘ing been occupied by my feathered Esquimaux. 
At the other side of the woods, in a marshy in- 
closure, I found the delicate tracery of the snow- 

birds on the ermine-covered ground. I was par- 
| ticularly impressed with one of these delicate 
trails, which extended out from a brush-heap for 
perhaps a rod or more, and then circled back, 


214 A MIDWINTER WALK. 


making a beautiful loop of bird’s footprints on 
the snow. It was a rare picture. 

On my way home I witnessed one more curious 
freak of bird deportment. ‘This timea downy wood- 
pecker was the actor. A unique little genius he is 
at all times, as he pecks and hammers and chisels 
and pries at the crannies of the tree-trunks. But 
that day he had a new trick. I noticed him clam- 
bering up the stem of an oak with a white worm 
between his long mandibles. I wondered why he 
didn’t swallow it. Presently he wheeled about and 
deftly pushed the tidbit into a crevice of the bark, 
where he left it, and then hurled himself to another 
tree. Evidently he was not hungry, and so stowed 
the worm away in his larder for a future emergency. 


. 
—. OO 


TWO FRAGMENTS. 


In the paper on “Songs out of Season” I have 
spoken of the autumn carols of the fox sparrows. 
Since that time I have learned that these were 
merely fragments of song, though quite suggestive 
of the higher style of music they are capable of 
producing in the lyrical season. On their return 
in the spring from their pilgrimage to the south 
they make the woods echo with their stirring min- 
strelsy. One of them begins his song on a sapling ; 
soon another not far off responds, then another 
more remote takes up the refrain; and so the 
music swells until the woods ring with the gleeful 
antiphonal chorus. 

There is something peculiarly riant and pleasing 
about the lyrical performances of the fox sparrows, 
Perhaps a trained musician would contend that our 
bird’s voice needs cultivation and that his execu- 
tion lacks skill and smoothness; but for some of 
us this very artlessness constitutes the principal 


charm of hissong. Ata distance one often catches 
215 


216 TWO FRAGMENTS. 


a number of loud, clear notes, emitted in a kind of 
recitative, with a deliciously human intonation; if 
you get close to the songster you will find that the 
pauses between the higher notes are filled up by a 
low ecstatic twitter, the production of which causes 
the bird to quiver from head to tail. On the fifth 
of April one of these birds surprised me by his 
loud, vigorous, theme-like carol, which I almost 
mistook at first for the song of the brown thrasher. 

No careful bird student need be reminded that 
it is never safe to assert ex cathedra that he has 
heard every note in a bird’s musical repertory ; he 
finds himself constantly surprised by new displays 
of vocal talent. One day, while sauntering through 
the woods, I heard a melodious twittering in the 
bushes near me. The roundel, or whatever it may 
have been called, opened with a lisping tsty, much 
like that of the snowbird. Could it be that junco 
had at last broken into song? I must investigate. 
Peering about in the tangle of bushes, I soon de- 
scried the mysterious musician; it was our old 
friend, the fox sparrow, rehearsing a new song, 
He was industriously picking and scratching among 
the dry leaves, bobbing up and down in a ludicrous 
manner — as if he were dancing a jig —in quest 


of dainties, and all the while running Over his 


TWO FRAGMENTS. ma we 


medley of notes and trills as a sort of accompani- 
ment to his work. He is an interesting bird, and 
I should very much like to watch his antics at his 
summer home in Labrador and Alaska. 

Surprises are always lying in wait for the dili- 
gent student of bird-life. One cold, blustering 
night in the latter part of March, while the wind 
howled about the house, driving the snow in blind- 
ing whirls, I really became anxious for my wood- 
land friends, fearing they might not be able to find 
shelter from the fierce storm ; and I resolved to go 
out early the next morning to see how they had 
fared during the night. No need whatever for 
anxiety. The birds seem to be able to take care 
of themselves. When morning came the storm 
had abated and the sky was clear, but the air was 
sharp with frost, the round covered with two 
inches of snow, and a breastplate of ice lay on the 
ponds; and yet the sun had not risen— I was in 
the woods at “ peep of dawn” — before the birds’ 
matutinal concert began. I was compelled to en- 
gage ina good deal of muscular exercise to keep 
my fingers and toes from getting frost-bitten, so 
keen was the air; but to my surprise the cold did 
not dishearten the birds in the least. The fox 
sparrows were singing more gayly than I had yet 


218 TWO FRAGMENTS. 


heard them, while the song-sparrows, bush-sparrows, 
robins, meadow larks, Carolina wrens, towhee bunt- 
ings, cardinal grossbeaks, goldfinches, and bluebirds 
were all doin g their “level best ” to swell the morn- 
ing chorus. I have seldom heard more birds sing- 
ing at the same time. 

Still another surprise was in store for me that 
morning. I noticed a couple of birds warbling in 
the trees above me, and although I ogled them for 
a long time with my opera glass, I could not iden- 
tify them. They were perched too high to be seen 
plainly. They twittered away in a continuous 
strain, but the song was new to me, and for that 
reason I was all the more anxious to identify the 
songsters. ‘The question was how to get them to 
drop to a lower perch. At length I began to leap 
about in a rather undignified way for a staid or- 
nithologist, gesticulating wildly and yelling in a 
loud voice. Finally my ruse proved successful; 
the birds, convinced, I suppose, that an inmate of 
the county asylum had escaped, darted down into 
the adjoining cornfield. As they alighted I caught 
a flash of white in their tails. Could they be — but 
no, I must make sure; and so I scrambled over the 
rail fence and hurried after the fugitives. Yes, 
my presentiment had been correct; the feathered 


TWO FRAGMENTS. 219 


sphinx was nothing more nor less than the common 
grass-finch or vesper sparrow, a bird with which I 
had been familiar for years. But the idea of a 
erass-finch warbling in a tree-top! And such an 
unheard-of warble! Hada backwoodsman begun 
a conversation in Hebrew I should have been 
scarcely more surprised. 

However, the mystery, if there is any mystery 
about it, may be readily explained. The bird had 
recently arrived from the south, and, as I soon 
learned, was putting himself through a course of 
training for the spring and summer concerts in 
which he was soon to have so prominent a part. 
After identifying him I found it easy to detect 
the sad, dulcet opening notes of his true song, 
blending with the rather unmusical twitter of his 
“maiden” efforts. His rehearsals had not been in 
vain, for a few days later he was in full tune and 
his roundelays were indeed very sweet. 

The next autumn I found that the grass-finches 
were again out of tune, singing a continuous, twit- 
tering warble instead of the sweet intermittent 
trills of the spring. Then it was not a rehearsal 
for the coming song festival, but rather a sort of 
aftermath of the festival that was past. At least, 
such was my theory. 


GOOD-BY TO THE BIRDS. 


To my mind no subject is of more thrilling in- 
terest than the migration of birds. What exten- 
sive travelers are some of these feathered cruisers 
of the air! Think of a dainty atom of a bird mak- 
ing an aérial voyage in the spring from Central 
America or Panama to Hudson’s Bay and even to 
Greenland, and then back again in the fall! What 
a disproportion between the size of the bird and 
the distance traversed in its semi-annual trips! 

Nor can one help thinking of the scenes that must 
pass before, or rather below, the eyes of these mi- 
grants as they pursue their journey day after day. 
Over the mountains they fly, across the deep val- 
leys, the stretching plains, and the broad expanse 
of the great southern gulf. All of it is very won- 
derful, almost awe-inspiring, and one may be par- 
doned for pausing to speculate on the unerring 
instinct that guides their tiny crafts through the 
trackless oceans of air, to the same suburb, or. 


woodland, or marsh they visited six months before. 
220 


GOOD-BY TO THE BIRDS. ed | 


However, it is not my purpose in this chapter to 
deal with the subject in a general way, but rather 
to record some of my observations on the south- 
ward procession of the birds in the autumn. The 
air is full of fluttering wings; I can almost feel 
the quick pulsations in my study, as I try to steal 
an hour for indoor work, when I really want to be 
out of doors “watching the procession.” I could 
fully sympathize with the feeling of a charming 
writer on birds in Massachusetts when he wrote 
me last spring: “I can hardly remain indoors 
long enough to perform my daily stint;” and now 
that the autumnal procession is at its height, I 
feel an almost irresistible impulse every few min- 
utes to make a dash for the woods. What if some 
rare bird should pass while Iam sittmg at my desk 
scrawling these lines! It would be an irreparable 
loss. 

Karly in the migrating season the southward- 
bound birds pass in single file, then in double file, 
then four and five abreast, and finally in regiments, 
companies and armies as numerous as the hosts 
with which Xerxes made his onslaught upon the 
Greeks. Sometimes a platoon of these feathered 
marchers take possession of the maples before the 


house. Often as I pass along the streets on these 


peyiee 3 _._ G@OOD-BY TO THE BIRDS. 


autumn days, I hear their chirping in the trees 
above me, and cannot help stopping to ogle them 
awhile; which is generally the signal for a number 
of passers-by to pause and ogle me as if they were 
in doubt of my sanity. 

The procession begins quite early in the season, 
sometimes by the latter part of July, if not before. 
The first migrant I noticed this year (1890) was 
a black-and-white creeping warbler, in a very tat- 
tered toilet, for he was moulting. This was in 
midsummer, and I have no doubt he was a scout 
sent out before the main body to reconnoiter. A 
week or so later several female redstarts and the 
blue-gray gnatcatcher were flitting gayly about in 
the trees at the border of my favorite woodland ; 
they were evidently the vanguard of the cavalcade 
soon to follow. My notes inform me that on the 
twenty-second of August I saw a male redstart and 
several creeping warblers in full plumage, and also 
the Nashville warbler and the black-poll. On the 
twenty-eighth a magnolia warbler was added to the 
list, and before the middle of September the woods 
were literally swarming with warblers of many spe- 
cles, accompanied by a few red-eyed vireos. The 
fifteenth of September was an ideal day for a bird 


lover, for on that day, while loitering in the woods, 


GOOD-BY TO THE BIRDS. 223 


I saw the following warblers: the redstart, the 
magnolia, the blue yellow-back, the blue golden- 
wing, the Tennessee, the Connecticut, the green 
black-cap, the Canada flycatcher, the creeper, the 
black-throated blue, the bay-breasted and several 
others that remained unidentified. 

Thus it will be seen that the warblers as a rule 
lead the van in the southward march, like a regi- 
ment of brilliantly arrayed militia, while the rear 
is brought up by the black-capped chickadees, the 

brown creepers, the kinglets, the white-throated 
) sparrows, the winter wrens, the red-breasted nut- 
hatches, the fox sparrows, the purple finches and 
many others. And as these birds from the north 
pass, the procession is joined by many of the birds 
that remain here during the summer; for now when 
I go to the woods I find that the brown thrashers, 
wood thrushes, orioles and catbirds are to be seen 
no more in their old haunts. 

Many of these birds are gregarious, and hence 
move in vast brigades. On the fourth of November 
last year thousands of robins took possession of one 
end of my woodland and fairly made the air leap 
with their united sputterings and scoldings. Still, 
no birds seem to go in such large armies as the 
crow blackbirds, which fairly darken the air with 


224 ; GOOD-BY TO THE BIRDS. 


their ebon plumes as they wing their way athwart 
the sky, and the rustle of their pinions when they 
fly low, causes quite a loud rumble. I remember 
one day I thought a cyclone was descending upon 
me as I stepped out upon the street ; but on look- 
ing up I saw that it was an immense flock of these 
blackbirds dashing over the house-tops to the neigh- 
boring grove. | 

Most birds are more or less gregarious during 
the migrating season, but very few species travel 
so compactly as the robins and blackbirds ; in fact, 
most of them, like the snowbirds, tree sparrows and 
white-throats, infest the woods in scattered flocks. 
Now and then a solitary straggler pursues a lonely 
way, either by accident or from choice. For exam- 
ple, I have seen but one red-breasted nuthatch 
in this locality, vet he seemed to be as well con- 
tent as if he were surrounded by hundreds of his 
kinsmen. 

But the most wonderful feature of migration is 
the nocturnal flight of the birds. How often I have 
stood in my door-yard at night and listened to them 
calling to one another through the darkness as they 
cruised overhead! An inexplicable feeling of lone- . 
liness comes over me at such times when I think 


of these tiny voyagers traversing mile after mile 


GOOD-BY TO THE BIRDS. yA a 


in the darkness, guided only by that wonderful 
faculty we call instinct. 

‘Their night calls are quite varied. Sometimes 
they consist of a sad little Z'seep/ as if one weary 
bird were asking of another, “ Are you there?” 
And then the reply from the right or left will come, 
“Here! here!” At other times the call is quite 
loud and nervous, giving one the impression that 
the bird has lost its way, or become separated from 
its companions. Frequently I hear a sharp, impa- 
tient cry, which seems to announce that a collision 
between two birds has taken place, causing one or 
both of them to break out petulantly, “ Get out of 
my way!” 

I often feel sure that I recognize the voices of 
the birds; sometimes the tones are like those 
of some of the warblers, then like the sharp chip 
of the cardinal grossbeak, or the loud cry of the 
kingfisher, and even the hoarse alarm-call of the 
“ fly-up-the-creek,” or green heron. 

And thus they move on and on in ceaseless pro- 
cession, these wonderful “ birds of passage,” pur- 
suing their nocturnal pilgrimage, and I stand 
chained to the spot, listening to their calls, until, 
the hour grows late, when I go reluctantly to my 
room, and lighting a lamp, read over again the sad 


226 GOOD-BY TO THE BIRDS. 


beautiful lines of Longfellow, who must have lis- 
tened to these “ Voices of the Night” as I have 
done so often. 


‘¢T hear the beat 

Of their pinions fleet 

As from the land of snow and sleet 
They seek a southern lea. 


‘¢] hear the cry 

Of their voices high 

Falling dreamily through the sky, 
But their forms I cannot see.” 


LE END: 


eet mat, (tb AY oe 


i ae* A" al Ki 4 a 
if ‘s : ; ; 
soi its ts ras 
5 
rr > 
ar nes: 
: le? 
-. | 
> Het Py 
Sd a 
; 
—, ‘ 
wet 
. 2 ; 
. 
: a 
J 
y t 
aot 
, 
i a 
- : 
; : 
: 
. 
en 
. <_ 
¥ 
o 
— 
- — 
~ é 
+ 
= 


- 


“a ep 
ite Ss 
5 
wet : 
: - 
Wi 
J ; 
yo Sa 
x 
Pa. ; 
= s ( wl 


sm 


Minn 
3 0112 073666775 


